Your first request

Send a message through SQS on the emulator: create a queue, send example.net to it, receive the message and delete it, then delete the queue. Each step shows the output to expect. The steps were checked against Vera 1.2.2 on 8 November 2026.

Before you start

• A running emulator. Start it as in Get started. This SQS walkthrough uses the Free plan; no license key is required.
• AWS CLI 2.31.35 (official bundled distribution) and Python 3. The example uses python3 to read the receipt handle from the response. aws --version shows which CLI you have; for installing it, see AWS’s installation instructions.
• A terminal of its own and an empty scratch directory. The setup below changes environment variables in that terminal and writes a config file to the directory.
• Dummy credentials. Requests are signed with the dummy keys set below. Real AWS credentials aren’t needed.

Point the AWS CLI at the emulator

Run this in the new terminal, from the scratch directory. It sets VERA_ENDPOINT to AWS’s address on your machine, as published in Get started, and gives the shell dummy credentials. It keeps the CLI from finding real ones in a profile, a credentials file, instance metadata or the environment, and gives it a config file of its own, vera-aws-config, so your own AWS profile isn’t touched. The config sets the region, JSON output, base64 for binary values in JSON input, and path-style S3 addressing.

export VERA_ENDPOINT="http://localhost:5003"
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=test AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=test
export AWS_REGION=us-east-1 AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
export AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE=/dev/null
export AWS_EC2_METADATA_DISABLED=true
export AWS_PAGER="" AWS_CLI_AUTO_PROMPT=off
unset AWS_PROFILE AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE
unset AWS_SESSION_TOKEN AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN
unset AWS_WEB_IDENTITY_TOKEN_FILE AWS_ROLE_ARN AWS_ROLE_SESSION_NAME
unset AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_FULL_URI
unset AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_RELATIVE_URI
cat > vera-aws-config <<'EOF'
[default]
region = us-east-1
output = json
cli_binary_format = base64
s3 =
    addressing_style = path
EOF
export AWS_CONFIG_FILE="$PWD/vera-aws-config"

Every command below passes VERA_ENDPOINT with --endpoint-url. Check the setup by asking STS who you are. The account is the one configured on your instance.

aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sts get-caller-identity

Output

{
    "UserId": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE",
    "Account": "123456789012",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/emulator"
}

Create a queue

Create the queue, and keep its URL in QUEUE_URL for the next steps:

QUEUE_URL=$(aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sqs create-queue \
  --queue-name vera-docs-queue \
  --attributes '{"VisibilityTimeout": "30", "MessageRetentionPeriod": "60"}' \
  --query QueueUrl --output text)
echo "$QUEUE_URL"

The URL looks like AWS’s, with your instance’s account in it, but it names the queue: requests still go to VERA_ENDPOINT.

Output

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123456789012/vera-docs-queue

Send a message

aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sqs send-message \
  --queue-url "$QUEUE_URL" --message-body example.net

MD5OfMessageBody is the MD5 of example.net. The MessageId differs on every run.

Output

{
    "MD5OfMessageBody": "28bf0eba6631b5563247f1b42d9a7f17",
    "MessageId": "01f94bb2-17df-43f8-9405-cea3f56f5c3b"
}

Receive the message

Receive the message and save the response to received.json:

aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sqs receive-message \
  --queue-url "$QUEUE_URL" --wait-time-seconds 0 --max-number-of-messages 1 > received.json
cat received.json

The response holds the message you sent, with its body, example.net, and the same MessageId the send returned. These are selected fields; the MessageId and ReceiptHandle differ on every run.

Output (selected fields)

{
    "Messages": [
        {
            "MessageId": "01f94bb2-17df-43f8-9405-cea3f56f5c3b",
            "ReceiptHandle": "recpt-c62497f3cafd449ca",
            "Body": "example.net"
        }
    ]
}

Then delete the message with its receipt handle, as a consumer does once it has handled a message. The first line copies the ReceiptHandle from received.json. The delete prints nothing.

RECEIPT_HANDLE=$(python3 -c 'import json; print(json.load(open("received.json"))["Messages"][0]["ReceiptHandle"])')
aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sqs delete-message \
  --queue-url "$QUEUE_URL" --receipt-handle "$RECEIPT_HANDLE"

Clean up

Delete the queue, which prints nothing, then the response file and the config file:

aws --endpoint-url "$VERA_ENDPOINT" sqs delete-queue --queue-url "$QUEUE_URL"
rm received.json vera-aws-config

Then close the terminal. Its AWS_CONFIG_FILE still points at the config file you just deleted, so don’t run more AWS commands in it.

Next steps

• SQS: what else the emulator supports there, and where it stops. A message made visible again with ChangeMessageVisibility isn’t returned by the next receive, and an empty receive doesn’t wait for messages. The page also covers per-message delays and FIFO deduplication.
• Using the emulator: the setup every service shares, and the limits that apply to all of them.
• All services: what you can test on each AWS service.