---
title: Message queues
description: The Node.js Agent will automatically create spans for activity to/from your Amazon SQS message queues.  To record these spans, your message queue activity...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/reference/apm/agents/nodejs/message-queues
products:
  - APM Agent
  - APM Node.js Agent
applies_to:
  - Serverless Observability projects: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
  - Application Performance Monitoring Agent for Node.js: Generally available
---

# Message queues
The Node.js Agent will automatically create spans for activity to/from your Amazon SQS message queues.  To record these spans, your message queue activity must occur during a transaction. If you’re performing queue operations during an HTTP request from a [supported framework](/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/reference/apm/agents/nodejs/supported-technologies#compatibility-frameworks), the agent will start a transaction automatically.  However, if you’re performing queue operations in a stand-alone program (such as a message processor), you’ll need to use the Node.js Agent’s [`startTransaction()`](/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3028/reference/apm/agents/nodejs/agent-api#apm-start-transaction) method to manually create transactions for your messages.
You can see an example of this in the following code sample.
```js
const apm = require('elastic-apm-node').start({/*...*/})
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
// Set the region
AWS.config.update({region: 'us-west'});

// Create an SQS service object
const sqs = new AWS.SQS({apiVersion: '2012-11-05'});

/* ... */

const transaction = apm.startTransaction("Process Messages", 'cli') 
sqs.receiveMessage(params, function(err, data) {
  if(err) {
    console.log("Receive Error", err);
  } else {
    console.log(`Length: ${data.Messages.length}`)
    /* process messages */
  }
  // end the transaction
  transaction.end() 
})
```


## Distributed tracing and messaging queues

To enable queue scheduling and queue processing with distributed tracing, use the Node.js Agent’s API to *store* a `traceparent` header with your queue message; then, provide that `traceparent` header when starting a new transaction.
Here’s a *new* example that uses the Node.js Agent API to store the `traceparent` as a message attribute and then uses that attribute to link your new transaction with the original.
**Storing the Traceparent**
When sending the message, you’ll want to add the trace as one of the `MessageAttributes`.
```js
// stores the traceparent when sending the queue message
const traceParent = apm.currentTransaction ? apm.currentTransaction.traceparent : ''

// Use the Amazon SQS `MessageAttributes` to pass
// on the  traceparent header
const params = {
  /* ... other params ... */
  MessageAttributes: {
    /* ... other attributes ... */
    "MyTraceparent":{
        DataType: "String",
        StringValue: traceParent
    }
  }

}
sqs.sendMessage(params, function(err, data) {
  /* ... */
});
```

This will save the traceparent value so we can use it later on when receiving the messages.
**Applying the Traceparent**
When we receive our queue messages, we’ll check the message for our Traceparent header, and use it to start a new transaction.  By starting a transaction with this traceparent header we’ll be linking the sending and receiving via distributed tracing.
```js
// uses the traceparent to start a transaction

sqs.receiveMessage(params, function(err, data) {
  if(!data.Messages) {
    return
  }

  // loop over your returned messages
  for(const message of data.Messages) { 
    // start a transaction to process each message, using our previously
    // saved distributed tracing traceparent header
    let traceparent
    if(message.MessageAttributes.MyTraceparent) {
        traceparent = message.MessageAttributes.MyTraceparent.StringValue
    }
    const transactionMessage = apm.startTransaction('RECEIVE_TRANSACTION', 'cli', {
      childOf:traceparent 
    })
    /* ... process message ... */
    transactionMessage.end() 
  }
})
```