Acknowledge from jms

Question

I have written two jms program (publisher/subscriber). Those are asynchronous. I want to know how can publisher know subscriber can receive the message succesful? Can subscriber reply a acknowledge to publisher?
<! ================ subscriber program ====================== >
import java.util.Hashtable;
import java.lang.Runtime;
import java.lang.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.jms.*;
import javax.naming.*;
import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.naming.NamingException;
import javax.jms.QueueConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.TopicConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.TopicConnection;
import javax.jms.TopicSession;
import javax.jms.TopicSubscriber;
import javax.jms.Topic;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;
import javax.jms.Session;
import javax.jms.MessageListener;
import javax.jms.JMSException;
public class HelloSubscriber implements MessageListener {
TopicConnection topicConnection;
TopicSession topicSession;
TopicSubscriber topicSubscriber;
Topic topic;
public HelloSubscriber(String factoryJNDI, String topicJNDI) throws JMSException, NamingException
QueueConnection queueConnection = null;
try{
     Context context = new InitialContext();
     TopicConnectionFactory topicFactory = (TopicConnectionFactory)context.lookup("ConnectionFactory");
     topicConnection = topicFactory.createTopicConnection();
     topicSession = topicConnection.createTopicSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
     topic = (Topic)context.lookup(topicJNDI);
     topicSubscriber = topicSession.createSubscriber(topic);
topicSubscriber.setMessageListener(this);
     System.out.println("HelloSubscriber subscribed to topic: " + topicJNDI);
     topicConnection.start();
} catch (NamingException nEx){
System.out.println(nEx.toString() + "\nDoes the queue exist?");
System.exit(1);
public void onMessage(Message m) {
try {
     String msg = ((TextMessage)m).getText();
}catch(JMSException ex) {
     System.err.println("Could not get text message: " + ex);
     ex.printStackTrace();
public void close() throws JMSException {
topicSession.close();
topicConnection.close();
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
     HelloSubscriber subscriber = new HelloSubscriber(
     // Name of ConnectionFactory
     "TopicConnectionFactory",
     // Name of destination to publish to
     "topic/testTopic"
}catch(Exception ex) {
     System.err.println("An exception occured while testing HelloPublisher: " + ex);
     ex.printStackTrace();
} // HelloSubscriber

Answer 1

You can do this by having the publisher set the ReplyTo field in the message header, which the subscriber must subsequently reply to when it has successfully processed the message. Both ends have to be both publishers and subscribers for this to work. You can also look into using the TopicRequestor at the publisher end. You may want to write your own topic requestor that doesn't use a temporary topic if you need the reply/acknowledgement message to be persistent.
- Bjarne.