I am using boto library in Python to get Amazon SQS messages. In exceptional cases I don't delete messages from queue in order to give a couple of more changes to recover temporary failures. But I don't want to keep receiving failed messages constantly. What I would like to do is either delete messages after receiving more than 3 times or not get message if receive count is more than 3.
What is the most elegant way of doing it?
It should be done in few steps.

create SQS connection :-
sqsconnrec = SQSConnection(AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
create queue object :-
request_q = sqsconnrec.create_queue("queue_Name")
load the queue messages :-
messages= request_q.get_messages()
now you get the array of message objects and to find the total number of messages :-
just do len(messages)

should work like charm.
How to get messages receive count in Amazon SQS using boto library in Python?