Queues now supports the ability to pause message delivery and/or purge (delete) messages on a queue. These operations can be useful when:

  • Your consumer has a bug or downtime, and you want to temporarily stop messages from being processed while you fix the bug
  • You have pushed invalid messages to a queue due to a code change during development, and you want to clean up the backlog
  • Your queue has a backlog that is stale and you want to clean it up to allow new messages to be consumed

To pause a queue using Wrangler, run the pause-delivery command. Paused queues continue to receive messages. And you can easily unpause a queue using the resume-delivery command.

$ wrangler queues pause-delivery my-queue
Pausing message delivery for queue my-queue.
Paused message delivery for queue my-queue.
$ wrangler queues resume-delivery my-queue
Resuming message delivery for queue my-queue.
Resumed message delivery for queue my-queue.

Purging a queue permanently deletes all messages in the queue. Unlike pausing, purging is an irreversible operation:

$ wrangler queues purge my-queue
✔ This operation will permanently delete all the messages in queue my-queue. Type my-queue to proceed. … my-queue
Purged queue 'my-queue'

You can also do these operations using the Queues REST API, or the dashboard page for a queue.

Pause and purge using the dashboard

This feature is available on all new and existing queues. Head over to the pause and purge documentation to learn more. And if you haven't used Cloudflare Queues before, get started with the Cloudflare Queues guide.