We are pleased to announce that the latest maintenance release for Spring AMQP (1.4.5.RELEASE) is now available. This contains just a few bug fixes since 1.4.4.

In addition, the first milestone release for the 1.5 release is also available (1.5.0.M1). A release candidate will be available in a month or so, with the GA expected later in the summer.

The main features of this release are highlighted below:

##Class-level @RabbitListener

It is now possible to define the @RabbitListener annotation at the class level. Together with method-level @RabbitHandler annotations, this allows a single listener to invoke different methods in the class, depending on the payload type. For example:

@RabbitListener(queues="orders, shipments")
public class MultiListenerBean {

    @RabbitHandler
    public OrderConfirmation handleOrder(Order order) {
        ...    
    }

    @RabbitHandler
    public Invoice ship(Shipment shipment) {
        ...
    }

}

##Auto-Declare Queues and Bindings for @RabbitListener

It is now possible to automatically declare queues, exchanges and bindings when using the @RabbitListener annotation.

@RabbitListener(bindings = @QueueBinding(
	value = @Queue(value = "auto.declare", autoDelete = "true"),
	exchange = @Exchange(value = "auto.exch", autoDelete = "true"),
	key = "auto.rk"))
public String handleWithDeclare(String foo) {
	return foo.toUpperCase();
}

In this example, the queue auto.declare is declared and bound to exchange auto.exch with routing key auto.rk. The exchange is declared too.

Previously, the Queue, Exchange and Binding had to be declared as separate @Beans.

##Configurable Exchange/Routing Key for Replies

Previously, when using request/reply messaging with the RabbitTemplate, replies were routed to the default exchange and routed with the queue name. It is now possible to supply a reply-address with the form exchange/routingKey to route using a specific exchange and routing key.

##RabbitManagementTemplate

The spring-erlang jar is no longer provided. Users are encouraged to use the RabbitMQ REST API instead. The RabbitMQ team are working on a Java binding for the REST API and Spring AMQP now provides a lightweight wrapper for that API using the familiar Queue, Exchange and Binding domain objects.

##Conclusion

Complete details of the new features can be found in the What's New section of the reference manual and the JIRA release notes.

Users are encouraged to try the new features before the GA release and provide feedback using the normal channels (spring-amqp tag on Stack Overflow, and JIRA).

See the project page for links to documentation and downloads.