Submit Your First Message

Summary

With the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS), you can develop applications like stock markets, audit logs, stablecoins, or new network services that require high throughput and decentralized trust. This is made possible by having direct access to the native speed, security, and fair ordering guarantees of the Hashgraph consensus algorithm, with the full trust of the Hedera ledger. In short, HCS offers the validity of the order of events and transparency into the history of events without requiring a persistent history of transactions. To achieve this, Mirror nodes store all transaction data so you can retrieve it to audit events.

Prerequisites

We recommend you complete the following introduction to get a basic understanding of Hedera transactions. This example does not build upon the previous examples.

Get a Hedera testnet account.
Set up your environment here.

✅ You can find a full code check for this tutorial at the bottom of this page.

Create Topic
Subscribe to Topic
Submit Message
Code Check

1. Create your first topic

To create your first topic, you will use the TopicCreateTransaction(), set its properties, and submit it to the Hedera network. In this tutorial, you will create a public topic by not setting any properties on the topic. This means that anyone can send messages to your topic. If you would like to create a private topic, you can optionally set a topic key (setSubmitKey()). This means that messages submitted to this topic require the topic key to sign. If the topic key does not sign a message, the message will not be submitted to the topic. After submitting the transaction to the Hedera network, you can obtain the new topic ID by requesting the receipt. Creating a topic only costs you $0.01.

// Create a new topic
TransactionResponse txResponse = new TopicCreateTransaction()
   .execute(client);

// Get the receipt
TransactionReceipt receipt = txResponse.getReceipt(client);

// Get the topic ID
TopicId topicId = receipt.topicId;

// Log the topic ID
System.out.println("Your topic ID is: " +topicId);

// Wait 5 seconds between consensus topic creation and subscription creation
Thread.sleep(5000);

After you create the topic, you will want to subscribe to the topic via a Hedera mirror node. Subscribing to a topic via a Hedera mirror node allows you to receive the stream of messages that are being submitted to it.

The Hedera Testnet client already establishes a connection to a Hedera mirror node. You can set a custom mirror node by calling client.SetMirrorNetwork(). Please note that you can subscribe to Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) topics via gRPC API only. Remember to set the mirror node’s host and port accordingly when dealing with another mirror node provider.

To subscribe to a topic, you will use TopicMessageQuery(). You will provide it with the topic ID to subscribe to, the Hedera mirror node client information, and the topic message contents to return.

// Subscribe to the topic
new TopicMessageQuery()
    .setTopicId(topicId)
    .subscribe(client, resp -> {
            String messageAsString = new String(resp.contents, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
            System.out.println(resp.consensusTimestamp + " received topic message: " + messageAsString);
    });

3. Submit a message

Now you are ready to submit your first message to the topic. To do this, you will use TopicMessageSubmitTransaction(). For this transaction, you will provide the topic ID and the message to submit to it. Each message you send to a topic costs you $0.0001. In other words, you can send 10,000 messages for $1 on the Hedera Network.

// Send message to the topic
TransactionResponse submitMessage = new TopicMessageSubmitTransaction()
      .setTopicId(topicId)
      .setMessage("Hello, HCS!")
      .execute(client);

// Get the receipt of the transaction
 TransactionReceipt receipt2 = submitMessage.getReceipt(client);

// Prevent the main thread from exiting so the topic message can be returned and printed to the console
Thread.sleep(30000);

To conclude: The total cost to create a topic and send a message to it is $0.0101.

⚠️ Upcoming Price Change – ConsensusSubmitMessageStarting January 2026, the price for the ConsensusSubmitMessage transaction will increase from $0.0001 to $0.0008 USD. This change will take effect with the v0.69 mainnet release and applies only to ConsensusSubmitMessage transactions. This update improves the long-term economic sustainability of the Hedera network while preserving predictable and USD-fixed pricing for developers. Read this blog article for more information.

Code Check ✅

Java

import com.hedera.hashgraph.sdk.*;
import io.github.cdimascio.dotenv.Dotenv;

import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException;

public class CreateTopicTutorial {
public static void main(String[] args) throws TimeoutException, PrecheckStatusException, ReceiptStatusException, InterruptedException {

        // Grab your Hedera testnet account ID and private key
        AccountId operatorId = AccountId.fromString(Dotenv.load().get("OPERATOR_ID"));
        PrivateKey operatorKey = PrivateKey.fromString(Dotenv.load().get("OPERATOR_KEY"));

        // Build your Hedera client
        Client client = Client.forTestnet();
        client.setOperator(operatorId, operatorKey);

        // Create a new topic
        TransactionResponse txResponse = new TopicCreateTransaction()
                .execute(client);

        // Get the receipt
        TransactionReceipt receipt = txResponse.getReceipt(client);

        // Get the topic ID
        TopicId topicId = receipt.topicId;

        // Log the topic ID
        System.out.println("Your topic ID is: " +topicId);

        // Wait 5 seconds between consensus topic creation and subscription creation
        Thread.sleep(5000);

        // Subscribe to the topic
        new TopicMessageQuery()
                .setTopicId(topicId)
                .subscribe(client, resp -> {
                    String messageAsString = new String(resp.contents, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
                    System.out.println(resp.consensusTimestamp + " received topic message: " + messageAsString);
                });

        // Send message to topic
        TransactionResponse submitMessage = new TopicMessageSubmitTransaction()
                .setTopicId(topicId)
                .setMessage("Hello, HCS!")
                .execute(client);

        // Get the receipt of the transaction
        TransactionReceipt receipt2 = submitMessage.getReceipt(client);

        // Wait before the main thread exits to return the topic message to the console
        Thread.sleep(30000);

    }

}

JavaScript

console.clear();
import dotenv from "dotenv";
dotenv.config();

import {
  Client,
  TopicCreateTransaction,
  TopicMessageQuery,
  TopicMessageSubmitTransaction,
} from "@hashgraph/sdk";

// Grab the OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY from the .env file
const operatorId = process.env.OPERATOR_ID;
const operatorKey = process.env.OPERATOR_KEY;

// Build Hedera testnet and mirror node client
const client = Client.forTestnet().setOperator(operatorId, operatorKey);

async function submitFirstMessage() {
  // Create a new topic
  const txResponse = await new TopicCreateTransaction().execute(client);

  // Grab the newly generated topic ID
  const receipt = await txResponse.getReceipt(client);
  const topicId = receipt.topicId;
  console.log(`Your topic ID is: ${topicId}`);

  // Wait 5 seconds between consensus topic creation and subscription creation
  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 5000));

  // Subscribe to the topic
  new TopicMessageQuery()
    .setTopicId(topicId)
    .subscribe(client, null, (message) => {
      const messageAsString = Buffer.from(message.contents, "utf8").toString();
      console.log(
        `${message.consensusTimestamp.toDate()} Received: ${messageAsString}`
      );

      // Close client right after the first received message
      client.close();
    });

  // Send message to topic
  const sendResponse = await new TopicMessageSubmitTransaction({
    topicId: topicId,
    message: "Hello, HCS!",
  }).execute(client);
  const getReceipt = await sendResponse.getReceipt(client);

  // Get the status of the transaction
  const transactionStatus = getReceipt.status;
  console.log(
    "The message transaction status: " + transactionStatus.toString()
  );
}

submitFirstMessage();

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"time"

    hedera "github.com/hiero-ledger/hiero-sdk-go/v2/sdk"
    "github.com/joho/godotenv"

)

func main() {

    // Loads the .env file and throws an error if it cannot load the variables from that file corectly
    err := godotenv.Load(".env")
    if err != nil {
    	panic(fmt.Errorf("Unable to load enviroment variables from .env file. Error:n%v\n", err))
    }

    // Grab your testnet account ID and private key from the .env file
    operatorId, err := hedera.AccountIDFromString(os.Getenv("OPERATOR_ID"))
    if err != nil {
    	panic(err)
    }

    operatorKey, err := hedera.PrivateKeyFromString(os.Getenv("OPERATOR_KEY"))
    if err != nil {
    	panic(err)
    }

    // Create your testnet client
    client := hedera.ClientForTestnet()
    client.SetOperator(operatorId, operatorKey)

    // Create a new topic
    transactionResponse, err := hedera.NewTopicCreateTransaction().
    	Execute(client)

    if err != nil {
    	println(err.Error(), ": error creating topic")
    	return
    }

    // Get the topic create transaction receipt
    transactionReceipt, err := transactionResponse.GetReceipt(client)

    if err != nil {
    	println(err.Error(), ": error getting topic create receipt")
    	return
    }

    // Get the topic ID from the transaction receipt
    topicID := *transactionReceipt.TopicID

    // Log the topic ID to the console
    fmt.Printf("topicID: %v\n", topicID)

    // Create the query to subscribe to a topic
    _, err = hedera.NewTopicMessageQuery().
    	SetTopicID(topicID).
    	Subscribe(client, func(message hedera.TopicMessage) {
    		fmt.Println(message.ConsensusTimestamp.String(), "received topic message ", string(message.Contents), "\r")
    	})

        // Submit message to topic
    submitMessage, err := hedera.NewTopicMessageSubmitTransaction().
    	SetMessage([]byte("Hello, HCS!")).
    	SetTopicID(topicID).
    	Execute(client)

    if err != nil {
    	println(err.Error(), ": error submitting to topic")
    	return
    }

        // Get the transaction receipt
    receipt, err := submitMessage.GetReceipt(client)

        // Log the transaction status
    transactionStatus := receipt.Status
    fmt.Println("The transaction message status " + transactionStatus.String())

        // Prevent the program from exiting to display the message from the mirror to the console
    time.Sleep(30 * time.Second)
    }

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Writer: Simi, Sr. Software Manager

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Editor: Michiel, DevRel Engineer

GitHub | LinkedIn GitHub | LinkedIn

Editor: Krystal, DX Engineer

GitHub | X GitHub | X

​Summary

​Prerequisites

​Table of Contents

​1. Create your first topic

​2. Subscribe to a topic

​3. Submit a message

​Code Check ✅

Writer: Simi, Sr. Software Manager

Editor: Michiel, DevRel Engineer

Editor: Krystal, DX Engineer

Summary

Prerequisites

Table of Contents

1. Create your first topic

2. Subscribe to a topic

3. Submit a message

Code Check ✅