Laravel Queues Deep Dive

Why Queues?

Users hate waiting. Push slow tasks to background:

• Sending emails
• Processing uploads
• Generating reports
• Calling external APIs

Creating Jobs

php artisan make:job ProcessPodcast

class ProcessPodcast implements ShouldQueue
{
    use Dispatchable, InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;

    public function __construct(
        public Podcast $podcast
    ) {}

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

Dispatching Jobs

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

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

// Specific queue
ProcessPodcast::dispatch($podcast)->onQueue('podcasts');

Running Workers

# Development
php artisan queue:work

# Production (with Supervisor)
php artisan queue:work --tries=3 --timeout=90

Handling Failures

class ProcessPodcast implements ShouldQueue
{
    public $tries = 3;
    public $backoff = [60, 120, 300];  // Retry delays

    public function failed(Throwable $exception): void
    {
        // Notify admin, log error, etc.
    }
}

Job Batches

Process many jobs as a group:

Bus::batch([
    new ProcessFile($file1),
    new ProcessFile($file2),
    new ProcessFile($file3),
])->then(function (Batch $batch) {
    // All jobs completed
})->catch(function (Batch $batch, Throwable $e) {
    // First failure
})->dispatch();

Monitoring

# View failed jobs
php artisan queue:failed

# Retry failed
php artisan queue:retry all

# Clear failed
php artisan queue:flush

Use Laravel Horizon for Redis queues - real-time dashboard.