Introduction to Nimbus

Get started with Nimbus, a .NET messaging framework that provides transport-agnostic messaging infrastructure.

What is Nimbus?

Nimbus is a .NET messaging framework that provides an abstraction layer over various messaging transports. Write your messaging code once, and run it on Azure Service Bus, Redis, AMQP (ActiveMQ Artemis), or any other supported transport without changing your application code.

Core Concepts

Nimbus implements message-based communication patterns:

Quick Start

Here’s a minimal example showing how to send and handle a command:

using Nimbus;
using Nimbus.Configuration;
using Nimbus.Handlers;
using Nimbus.MessageContracts;

// 1. Define your message
public class PlaceOrderCommand : IBusCommand
{
    public string OrderId { get; set; }
    public decimal Amount { get; set; }
}

// 2. Create a handler
public class PlaceOrderHandler : IHandleCommand<PlaceOrderCommand>
{
    public async Task Handle(PlaceOrderCommand command)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Processing order {command.OrderId} for ${command.Amount}");
        // Your business logic here
    }
}

// 3. Configure the bus
var bus = new BusBuilder()
    .Configure()
    .WithTransport(new RedisTransportConfiguration()
        .WithConnectionString("localhost:6379"))
    .WithNames("MyApp", Environment.MachineName)
    .WithTypesFrom(typeProvider)
    .WithAutofacDefaults(componentContext)
    .Build();

// 4. Send a command
await bus.Send(new PlaceOrderCommand
{
    OrderId = "ORD-12345",
    Amount = 99.99m
});

Supported Transports

Nimbus supports multiple messaging transports:

• Azure Service Bus - Enterprise-grade cloud messaging
• Redis - Fast, in-memory messaging for development and production
• AMQP - Open standard AMQP 1.0 transport, tested with ActiveMQ Artemis
• In-Process - In-memory transport perfect for testing

Key Features

Dependency Injection

Seamless integration with Autofac and other DI containers. Handlers and their dependencies are resolved from your container.

Routing

Flexible routing strategies that determine how messages map to queues and topics.

Interceptors

Add cross-cutting concerns like logging, metrics, and validation using inbound and outbound interceptors.

Serialization

Choose between DataContract serialization (default) or JSON serialization, or bring your own serializer.

Large Messages

Automatically handle large messages by storing payloads in Azure Blob Storage.

Next Steps

Architecture

Want to understand how Nimbus works under the hood? Check out the Architecture Overview to learn about:

• Message flow and dispatching
• Transport abstraction design
• Routing and type resolution
• Dependency injection patterns