Simple Background Job Processing in Elixir ⚡
Que is a job processing library backed by Mnesia, a distributed
real-time database that comes with Erlang / Elixir. That means it doesn't
depend on any external services like Redis for persisting job state. This
makes it really easy to use since you don't need to install anything other
than Que itself.
See the Documentation.
Installation
Add que to your project dependencies in mix.exs:
def deps do
[{:que, "~> 0.4.1"}]
endand then add it to your list of applications:
def application do
[applications: [:que]]
endMnesia Setup
Que runs out of the box, but by default all jobs are stored in-memory.
To persist jobs across application restarts, specify the DB path in
your config.exs:
config :mnesia, dir: 'mnesia/#{Mix.env}/#{node()}' # Notice the single quotesAnd run the following mix task:
$ mix que.setupThis will create the Mnesia schema and job database for you. For a
detailed guide, see the Mix Task Documentation. For
compiled releases where Mix is not available
see this.
Usage
Que is very similar to other job processing libraries such as Ku and
Toniq. Start by defining a Worker with a perform/1
callback to process your jobs:
defmodule App.Workers.ImageConverter do
use Que.Worker
def perform(image) do
ImageTool.save_resized_copy!(image, :thumbnail)
ImageTool.save_resized_copy!(image, :medium)
end
endYou can now add jobs to be processed by the worker:
Que.add(App.Workers.ImageConverter, some_image)
#=> :okPattern Matching
The argument here can be any term from a Tuple to a Keyword List
or a Struct. You can also pattern match and use guard clauses like
any other method:
defmodule App.Workers.NotificationSender do
use Que.Worker
def perform(type: :like, to: user, count: count) do
User.notify(user, "You have #{count} new likes on your posts")
end
def perform(type: :message, to: user, from: sender) do
User.notify(user, "You received a new message from #{sender.name}")
end
def perform(to: user) do
User.notify(user, "New activity on your profile")
end
endConcurrency
By default, all workers process one Job at a time, but you can
customize that by passing the concurrency option:
defmodule App.Workers.SignupMailer do
use Que.Worker, concurrency: 4
def perform(email) do
Mailer.send_email(to: email, message: "Thank you for signing up!")
end
endJob Success / Failure Callbacks
The worker can also export optional on_success/1 and on_failure/2
callbacks that handle appropriate cases.
defmodule App.Workers.ReportBuilder do
use Que.Worker
def perform({user, report}) do
report.data
|> PDFGenerator.generate!
|> File.write!("reports/#{user.id}/report-#{report.id}.pdf")
end
def on_success({user, _}) do
Mailer.send_email(to: user.email, subject: "Your Report is ready!")
end
def on_failure({user, report}, error) do
Mailer.send_email(to: user.email, subject: "There was a problem generating your report")
Logger.error("Could not generate report #{report.id}. Reason: #{inspect(error)}")
end
endHead over to Hexdocs for detailed Worker documentation.
Roadmap
- Write Documentation
- Write Tests
- Persist Job State to Disk
- Provide an API to interact with Jobs
- Add Concurrency Support
- Make jobs work in Parallel
- Allow customizing the number of concurrent jobs
- Success/Failure Callbacks
- Delayed Jobs
- Allow job cancellation
- Mix Task for creating Mnesia Database
- Better Job Failures
- Option to set timeout on workers
- Add strategies to automatically retry failed jobs
- Web UI
Contributing
- Fork, Enhance, Send PR
- Lock issues with any bugs or feature requests
- Implement something from Roadmap
- Spread the word ❤️
License
This package is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
