Intro

Welcome to this series of blog posts where I’ll guide you through getting comfortable with Solid Queue. The goal is to cover the essential aspects, providing you with a comprehensive reference you can revisit whenever you have questions.

Let’s get started!

Initial setup

Lets add Solid Queue to our Gemfile

gem "solid_queue", "~> 0.4.1"

Then, let's install the gem with bundler

bundle install

Good, now we are going to setup the migrations and configurations

rails generate solid_queue:install

Now, run the migrations

rails db:migrate

The configuration step, will update your config/environments/production.rb file changing the queue adapter to :solid_queue. Let's also update the development file to use it.

Open your config/environments/development.rb file and add the following line

config.active_job.queue_adapter = :solid_queue

Congratulations, you have the initial setup finished. Now, you are able to enqueue jobs with Solid Queue, however, you need to start Solid Queue's supervisor to execute these jobs.

bundle exec rake solid_queue:start

Optionally, you can choose specific jobs to use Solid Queue.

# app/jobs/my_job.rb

class MyJob < ApplicationJob
  self.queue_adapter = :solid_queue
  # ...
end

Important things to know

Integration with Active Job: it seamlessly integrates with Active Job, utilising its capabilities for job retries, discarding, error handling, serialisation, and delays.
Job Scheduling: it allows for scheduling jobs to run at specific times or after certain intervals using the set method with wait or wait_until options. For complex scheduling, integration with gems like "whenever" is also possible.
Mission Control - Jobs: you can monitor and manage your background jobs using the Mission Control - Jobs tool, which provides a user-friendly interface for tracking job status and performance.
Independent Operation: unlike many other queue systems, Solid Queue does not depend on external services such as Redis. This independence simplifies the setup and maintenance of your job queue system.

Basic differences between Active Job and Sidekiq

Enqueuing Jobs
Active Job:

MyJob.perform_later(args)

Sidekiq:

MySidekiqWorker.perform_async(args)

Specifying Queues
Active Job:

class MyJob < ApplicationJob
  queue_as :high_priority
end

Sidekiq:

class MySidekiqWorker
  include Sidekiq::Worker
  sidekiq_options queue: 'high_priority'
end

Customizing Job Execution Time
Active Job (scheduling a job to run after 10 minutes):

MyJob.set(wait: 10.minutes).perform_later(args)

Sidekiq (scheduling a job to run after 10 minutes):

MySidekiqWorker.perform_in(10.minutes, args)

Send welcome emails asynchronously upon user registration

Generate a mailer for sending welcome emails

rails generate mailer UserMailer welcome_email

This will create a user_mailer.rb in app/mailers and a view for the email in app/views/user_mailer.

Update the app/views/user_mailer/welcome_email.html.erb with your welcome message

Let's now generate a new job for that

rails generate job WelcomeEmail

Modify welcome_email_job.rb to use Solid Queue and send the email:

class WelcomeEmailJob < ApplicationJob
  queue_as :default

  def perform(user_id)
    user = User.find(user_id)
    UserMailer.welcome_email(user).deliver_now
  end
end

In the part of your application where users are registered (e.g., in a controller after a successful sign-up), enqueue the welcome email job:

WelcomeEmailJob.perform_later(user.id)

Ensure Solid Queue's supervisor is running to execute the enqueued jobs:

bundle exec rake solid_queue:start

Conclusion