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Active Job Basics
This guide provides you with all you need to get started in creating, enqueueing and executing background jobs.
After reading this guide, you will know:
- How to create jobs.
- How to enqueue jobs.
- How to run jobs in the background.
- How to send emails from your application async.
Introduction
Active Job is a framework for declaring jobs and making them run on a variety of queueing backends. These jobs can be everything from regularly scheduled clean-ups, to billing charges, to mailings. Anything that can be chopped up into small units of work and run in parallel, really.
The Purpose of Active Job
The main point is to ensure that all Rails apps will have a job infrastructure in place, even if it's in the form of an "immediate runner". We can then have framework features and other gems build on top of that, without having to worry about API differences between various job runners such as Delayed Job and Resque. Picking your queuing backend becomes more of an operational concern, then. And you'll be able to switch between them without having to rewrite your jobs.
Creating a Job
This section will provide a step-by-step guide to creating a job and enqueuing it.
Create the Job
Active Job provides a Rails generator to create jobs. The following will create a
job in app/jobs
(with an attached test case under test/jobs
):
$ bin/rails generate job guests_cleanup
invoke test_unit
create test/jobs/guests_cleanup_job_test.rb
create app/jobs/guests_cleanup_job.rb
You can also create a job that will run on a specific queue:
$ bin/rails generate job guests_cleanup --queue urgent
If you don't want to use a generator, you could create your own file inside of
app/jobs
, just make sure that it inherits from ActiveJob::Base
.
Here's what a job looks like:
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :default
def perform(*args)
# Do something later
end
end
Enqueue the Job
Enqueue a job like so:
# Enqueue a job to be performed as soon the queueing system is
# free.
MyJob.perform_later record
# Enqueue a job to be performed tomorrow at noon.
MyJob.set(wait_until: Date.tomorrow.noon).perform_later(record)
# Enqueue a job to be performed 1 week from now.
MyJob.set(wait: 1.week).perform_later(record)
That's it!
Job Execution
If no adapter is set, the job is immediately executed.
Backends
Active Job has built-in adapters for multiple queueing backends (Sidekiq, Resque, Delayed Job and others). To get an up-to-date list of the adapters see the API Documentation for ActiveJob::QueueAdapters.
Setting the Backend
You can easily set your queueing backend:
# config/application.rb
module YourApp
class Application < Rails::Application
# Be sure to have the adapter's gem in your Gemfile
# and follow the adapter's specific installation
# and deployment instructions.
config.active_job.queue_adapter = :sidekiq
end
end
Queues
Most of the adapters support multiple queues. With Active Job you can schedule the job to run on a specific queue:
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :low_priority
#....
end
You can prefix the queue name for all your jobs using
config.active_job.queue_name_prefix
in application.rb
:
# config/application.rb
module YourApp
class Application < Rails::Application
config.active_job.queue_name_prefix = Rails.env
end
end
# app/jobs/guests_cleanup.rb
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :low_priority
#....
end
# Now your job will run on queue production_low_priority on your
# production environment and on staging_low_priority
# on your staging environment
The default queue name prefix delimiter is '_'. This can be changed by setting
config.active_job.queue_name_delimiter
in application.rb
:
# config/application.rb
module YourApp
class Application < Rails::Application
config.active_job.queue_name_prefix = Rails.env
config.active_job.queue_name_delimiter = '.'
end
end
# app/jobs/guests_cleanup.rb
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :low_priority
#....
end
# Now your job will run on queue production.low_priority on your
# production environment and on staging.low_priority
# on your staging environment
If you want more control on what queue a job will be run you can pass a :queue
option to #set
:
MyJob.set(queue: :another_queue).perform_later(record)
To control the queue from the job level you can pass a block to #queue_as
. The
block will be executed in the job context (so you can access self.arguments
)
and you must return the queue name:
class ProcessVideoJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as do
video = self.arguments.first
if video.owner.premium?
:premium_videojobs
else
:videojobs
end
end
def perform(video)
# Do process video
end
end
ProcessVideoJob.perform_later(Video.last)
NOTE: Make sure your queueing backend "listens" on your queue name. For some backends you need to specify the queues to listen to.
Callbacks
Active Job provides hooks during the life cycle of a job. Callbacks allow you to trigger logic during the life cycle of a job.
Available callbacks
before_enqueue
around_enqueue
after_enqueue
before_perform
around_perform
after_perform
Usage
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :default
before_enqueue do |job|
# Do something with the job instance
end
around_perform do |job, block|
# Do something before perform
block.call
# Do something after perform
end
def perform
# Do something later
end
end
Action Mailer
One of the most common jobs in a modern web application is sending emails outside of the request-response cycle, so the user doesn't have to wait on it. Active Job is integrated with Action Mailer so you can easily send emails asynchronously:
# If you want to send the email now use #deliver_now
UserMailer.welcome(@user).deliver_now
# If you want to send the email through Active Job use #deliver_later
UserMailer.welcome(@user).deliver_later
GlobalID
Active Job supports GlobalID for parameters. This makes it possible to pass live Active Record objects to your job instead of class/id pairs, which you then have to manually deserialize. Before, jobs would look like this:
class TrashableCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
def perform(trashable_class, trashable_id, depth)
trashable = trashable_class.constantize.find(trashable_id)
trashable.cleanup(depth)
end
end
Now you can simply do:
class TrashableCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
def perform(trashable, depth)
trashable.cleanup(depth)
end
end
This works with any class that mixes in GlobalID::Identification
, which
by default has been mixed into Active Record classes.
Exceptions
Active Job provides a way to catch exceptions raised during the execution of the job:
class GuestsCleanupJob < ActiveJob::Base
queue_as :default
rescue_from(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound) do |exception|
# Do something with the exception
end
def perform
# Do something later
end
end