= Routing Messages With Wild Cards
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Apache ActiveMQ Artemis allows the routing of messages via wildcard addresses.

If a queue is created with an address of say `queue.news.#` then it will receive any messages sent to addresses that match this, for instance `queue.news.europe` or `queue.news.usa` or `queue.news.usa.sport`.
If you create a consumer on this queue, this allows a consumer to consume messages which are sent to a _hierarchy_ of addresses.

[NOTE]
====
In JMS terminology this allows "topic hierarchies" to be created.
====

This functionality is enabled by default.
To turn it off add the following to the `broker.xml` configuration.

[,xml]
----
<wildcard-addresses>
   <routing-enabled>false</routing-enabled>
</wildcard-addresses>
----

For more information on the wild card syntax and how to configure it, take a look at xref:wildcard-syntax.adoc#wildcard-syntax[wildcard syntax] chapter, also see the topic hierarchy example in the xref:examples.adoc#examples[examples].