How to read MSMQ messages from a remote machine without installing message queueing on local machine?

Question

There is a remote machine (let's call it MSMQ machine) which has MSMQ installed on it and is used by several other processes. I would like to read the messages on a given private queue of the MSMQ machine from my local machine - BUT, I would like to avoid installing Message Queuing on my machine, since what I need is simply to check and monitor the messages. I will not send nor receive messages (at least won't store them), I just want to "peek" at them.

Is there any way to do this? I have a code more a less like this now:

public string CheckMessageQueue(machine, queue)
{
    StringBuilder Ret = new StringBuilder();
    var path = machine "\Private$\" + queue;
    try
    {
        MessageQueue mq = new MessageQueue(path);
        Message msg = new Message();
        msg = mq.Peek();
        Console.WriteLine(msg.ToString());
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
    }
}

if I run the code above I get the error message

"Message Queuing has not been installed on this computer."

Another option may be to create some endpoint on the target (MSMQ) machine using, say, web-api and then access that from the client. — Eben Roux

Kjell-Åke Gafvelin Kjell-Åke Gafvelin · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-05T09:52:29

No, there is no other way than installing MSMQ on your local machine as well. The client libraries uses the local server to communicate with remote servers.

How to read MSMQ messages from a remote machine without installing message queueing on local machine?

1 Answers