message.in_flight

Refused 503 policy

An earlier attempt of this message was recorded moments ago and its publication is not confirmed yet.

Outcome	Refused, 503
Source	policy: This bus's operational rules (identity, grants, size, idempotency, story ownership). Not a verdict of the SOM standard.
Checked at	Idempotency (see the order of checks)

What it means

The bus records a message just before it publishes it, and marks it published just after. A retry that finds the record less than 30 seconds old, and not yet marked published, can't tell whether the earlier attempt is still under way, so it accepts nothing and asks you to come back. After 30 seconds the earlier attempt has certainly ended, and a retry publishes the message itself if it was never published.

How to fix it

Retry with the same message_id and the same body, with backoff, for at least 30 seconds. You then get 202 (published by your retry), 200 duplicate (the earlier attempt published it) or, for a snapshot, 409 message.superseded.

Related rules

• message.superseded
• bus.publish_failed

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Branch on the rule id, never on the violation's message text. All rules: rule catalogue.