SQS example VisibilityTimeout value too low

[HJTP]

Describe the issue

On this SQS example page:

https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/guide/sqs-example-sending-receiving-msgs.html

The VisibilityTimeout for the receive-and-delete example is set to 0. However, a message must be deleted within its visibility window. If the window is set to 0, it must be deleted within the same millisecond, as per the AWS docs. This code cannot reliably achieve this. Therefore, I'd propose setting the VisibilityTimeout to a value like 5 seconds:
VisibilityTimeout=5,

Links

https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/guide/sqs-example-sending-receiving-msgs.html

[RyanFitzSimmonsAK]

Hi @HJTP, thanks for reaching out. I spoke to someone on the team, and they pointed out that 0 is a valid value for that field, and that the example isn't intended to work off-the-shelf. I think an improvement that would help more people would be adding the details about VisibilityTimeout=0 to the guide that you linked. I think that strikes more at the actual issue of that information being harder to find than it should be. There's even a section titled 'Managing visibility timeout in Amazon SQS' that it should probably go under. Thoughts?

[HJTP]

Hi @RyanFitzSimmonsAK , thanks for the reply! Firstly, I must add that my comment only applies for FIFO queues. For normal queues, the example code might work (I have not tested this).

Regarding your proposal: good idea! Is there some kind of "important note" type of text block we could use for this caveat?

[RyanFitzSimmonsAK]

Yep, an example of an important note can be found on this page. This note basically contains all the information we need, so it's just a matter of adding it to the boto3 docs.

[HJTP]

@RyanFitzSimmonsAK OK! Do I do that or you?

[RyanFitzSimmonsAK]

That's something for me to bring up internally, which I've already done. Thanks again for raising this issue, I'll update you here once some progress has been made!

[HJTP]

You're welcome! While you're at it, I just found another one.
On this page: https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/reference/services/sqs/client/receive_message.html
It says
MaxNumberOfMessages=123,

While valid values are 1-10. Not a big deal, but might as well use a valid value as the example, right?

[RyanFitzSimmonsAK]

The Boto3 SQS user guide links to the SQS developer guide, which discussed the consequences of setting VisibilityTimeout=0.

Terminating the timeout – If you decide not to process a received message, you can terminate its visibility timeout by setting the VisibilityTimeout to 0 seconds through the ChangeMessageVisibility action. This immediately makes the message available for other consumers to process.

Closing this issue.

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