Laravel Queues & Jobs Development

When to Apply

Activate this skill when:

• Creating queued jobs for background processing
• Dispatching jobs to queues
• Handling job failures and retries
• Configuring queue connections and workers
• Implementing job batching or chaining

Documentation

Use search-docs for detailed Laravel queue patterns and documentation.

Basic Usage

Creating Jobs

Use Artisan to create jobs:

php artisan make:job ProcessPodcast

Job Structure

namespace App\Jobs;

use App\Models\Podcast; use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue; use Illuminate\Foundation\Queue\Queueable;

class ProcessPodcast implements ShouldQueue { use Queueable;

public function __construct(
    public Podcast $podcast,
) {}

public function handle(): void
{
    // Process the podcast...
}

}

Dispatching Jobs

// Dispatch to default queue ProcessPodcast::dispatch($podcast);

// Dispatch to specific queue ProcessPodcast::dispatch($podcast)->onQueue('podcasts');

// Dispatch with delay ProcessPodcast::dispatch($podcast)->delay(now()->addMinutes(10));

// Dispatch after response sent ProcessPodcast::dispatchAfterResponse($podcast);

// Dispatch synchronously (for testing) ProcessPodcast::dispatchSync($podcast);

Job Configuration

// Max attempts before failing
public int $tries = 3;

// Max exceptions before failing
public int $maxExceptions = 3;

// Timeout in seconds
public int $timeout = 120;

// Backoff between retries (seconds)
public int $backoff = 60;

// Or exponential backoff
public array $backoff = [30, 60, 120];

// Unique job (prevents duplicates)
public function uniqueId(): string
{
    return $this->podcast->id;
}

public int $uniqueFor = 3600; // Seconds

}

Handling Failures

public function handle(): void
{
    // Process...
}

public function failed(?Throwable $exception): void
{
    // Notify team, cleanup, etc.
    Log::error('Podcast processing failed', [
        'podcast_id' => $this->podcast->id,
        'error' => $exception->getMessage(),
    ]);
}

}

Job Batching

$batch = Bus::batch([ new ProcessPodcast($podcast1), new ProcessPodcast($podcast2), new ProcessPodcast($podcast3), ])->then(function (Batch $batch) { // All jobs completed successfully })->catch(function (Batch $batch, Throwable $e) { // First batch job failure detected })->finally(function (Batch $batch) { // Batch finished (success or failure) })->dispatch();

Job Chaining

Bus::chain([ new ProcessPodcast($podcast), new OptimizePodcast($podcast), new ReleasePodcast($podcast), ])->dispatch();

Rate Limiting

public function handle(): void { Redis::throttle('podcast-processing') ->allow(10) ->every(60) ->then(function () { // Process podcast... }, function () { // Release back to queue return $this->release(30); }); }

Queue Workers

# Start worker
php artisan queue:work

# Process specific queue
php artisan queue:work --queue=high,default

# Process single job
php artisan queue:work --once

# Restart workers after code deploy
php artisan queue:restart

Failed Jobs

# View failed jobs
php artisan queue:failed

# Retry specific job
php artisan queue:retry <job-id>

# Retry all failed jobs
php artisan queue:retry all

# Delete failed job
php artisan queue:forget <job-id>

# Flush all failed jobs
php artisan queue:flush

Common Pitfalls

• Not implementing ShouldQueue interface (job runs synchronously)
• Passing Eloquent models without serialization consideration
• Not handling job failures appropriately
• Missing queue:restart after deployments
• Not configuring appropriate timeouts for long-running jobs
• Forgetting to set up queue worker in production (Supervisor, Horizon)