Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

ChangeMessageVisibility

Changes the visibility timeout of a specified message in a queue to a new value. The default visibility timeout for a message is 30 seconds. The minimum is 0 seconds. The maximum is 12 hours. For more information, see Visibility Timeout in the Amazon SQS Developer Guide.

For example, if the default timeout for a queue is 60 seconds, 15 seconds have elapsed since you received the message, and you send a ChangeMessageVisibility call with VisibilityTimeout set to 10 seconds, the 10 seconds begin to count from the time that you make the ChangeMessageVisibility call. Thus, any attempt to change the visibility timeout or to delete that message 10 seconds after you initially change the visibility timeout (a total of 25 seconds) might result in an error.

An Amazon SQS message has three basic states:

A message is considered to be stored after it is sent to a queue by a producer, but not yet received from the queue by a consumer (that is, between states 1 and 2). There is no limit to the number of stored messages. A message is considered to be in flight after it is received from a queue by a consumer, but not yet deleted from the queue (that is, between states 2 and 3). There is a limit to the number of in flight messages.

Limits that apply to in flight messages are unrelated to the unlimited number of stored messages.

For most standard queues (depending on queue traffic and message backlog), there can be a maximum of approximately 120,000 in flight messages (received from a queue by a consumer, but not yet deleted from the queue). If you reach this limit, Amazon SQS returns the OverLimit error message. To avoid reaching the limit, you should delete messages from the queue after they're processed. You can also increase the number of queues you use to process your messages. To request a limit increase, file a support request.

For FIFO queues, there can be a maximum of 120,000 in flight messages (received from a queue by a consumer, but not yet deleted from the queue). If you reach this limit, Amazon SQS returns no error messages.

Request Syntax

{
   "QueueUrl": "string",
   "ReceiptHandle": "string",
   "VisibilityTimeout": number
}

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response with an empty HTTP body.

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

Examples

The following example queries request changes the visibility timeout for a message to 60 seconds. The structure of AUTHPARAMS depends on the signature of the API request. For more information, see Examples of Signed Signature Version 4 Requests in the Amazon General Reference.

Example

Using Amazon JSON protocol (Default)

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
X-Amz-Target: AmazonSQS.ChangeMessageVisibility
X-Amz-Date: <Date>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0
Authorization: <AuthParams>
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Connection: Keep-Alive 
{
    "QueueUrl": "https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/177715257436/MyQueue/",
    "ReceiptHandle": "AQEBaZ+j5qUoOAoxlmrCQPkBm9njMWXqemmIG6shMHCO6fV20JrQYg/AiZ8JELwLwOu5U61W+aIX5Qzu7GGofxJuvzymr4Ph53RiR0mudj4InLSgpSspYeTRDteBye5tV/txbZDdNZxsi+qqZA9xPnmMscKQqF6pGhnGIKrnkYGl45Nl6GPIZv62LrIRb6mSqOn1fn0yqrvmWuuY3w2UzQbaYunJWGxpzZze21EOBtywknU3Je/g7G9is+c6K9hGniddzhLkK1tHzZKjejOU4jokaiB4nmi0dF3JqLzDsQuPF0Gi8qffhEvw56nl8QCbluSJScFhJYvoagGnDbwOnd9z50L239qtFIgETdpKyirlWwl/NGjWJ45dqWpiW3d2Ws7q",
    "VisibilityTimeout": 60
}

Sample Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amzn-RequestId: <requestId>
Content-Length: 0
Date: <Date>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0

Example

Using Amazon query protocol

Sample Request

POST /177715257436/MyQueue HTTP/1.1
Host: sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
X-Amz-Date: <Date>
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Authorization: <AuthParams>
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Connection: Keep-Alive
Action=ChangeMessageVisibility
&VisibilityTimeout=60
&ReceiptHandle=AQEBwPTK2fT2gy97H1iyU5in9umgT+Y4IOxyKGOzpZa8iemEqoR5/aPn0xAodmiVTzyrW7S4e8XwcWbB04XK92jIQzUpiGwRFA4Dl7r3GOw84Qzq/0OBQe/JaKxJw6iilafYA5fo1SJQo5Wg8xXbJHTVlJqgvTXd/UtlByLMhWMi0JMra1UUjYiPsGtYUpLVnOaRkYSPvzRnFFYUbcqCW9lm2BijQKK6KNOZyCCfIh8TooE5i4P2L9N3o9yUHwMdv6p0nb5lKaGurQ2sJwwsyhXf38ZHnVN6pWwsqQnWKYuEXpxPofxd2lcLdgUurMpydS22DzCrkAaf6gmrdxbmCAoeQxE0sFf8alwX9yQmcOjny9aLGe7ro4Vl5o5KMr5hHM4vHEyhwi4wHeKM6MGX0vATA==

Sample Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ChangeMessageVisibilityResponse xmlns="http://queue.amazonaws.com/doc/2012-11-05/">
    <ResponseMetadata>
        <RequestId>6a7a282a-d013-4a59-aba9-335b0fa48bed</RequestId>
    </ResponseMetadata>
</ChangeMessageVisibilityResponse>

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific Amazon SDKs, see the following: