Beanstalk Messaging Plugin for Rails

The Beanstalk Messaging Plugin provides a simple interface to the beanstalkd queuing process.

Configuration

Copy beanstalk.example.yml from the plugin config folder to your Rails config folder and configure the queues that you need for your application. Use script/beanstalk to start/stop/restart your beanstalkd processes.

Using the Beanstalk::QueueManager

Use the Beanstalk::QueueManager class to access your queues by name, using the Beanstalk::QueueManager#queue method. For example:

queue_manager = BeanStalk::QueueManager.new("beanstalk-config.yml")
my_queue = queue_manager.queue(:my_queue)
my_queue << "Here's a message"

In your environment.rb file, you should create a single instance of a Beanstalk::QueueManager using your beanstalk.yml config as a global constant that you can use throughout your app. This will ensure that each request to QueueManager.queue returns the same Beanstalk::Queue instance. For example, you may wish to add the following to the bottom of environment.rb:

QUEUE_MANAGER = Beanstalk::QueueManager.new(File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'config', 'beanstalk.yml'))

You can disable queues globally by using the Beanstalk::QueueManager#disable method to temporarily disable the use of that particular queue. Beanstalk::QueueManager#disable_all disables all queues. When a queue is disabled, the Beanstalk::QueueManager will return a Beanstalk::NullQueue instead of an actual Beanstalk::Queue object which will handle any Beanstalk::Queue API calls silently:

# In environment.rb
QUEUE_MANAGER.disable(:my_queue)

## Elsewhere in your application...
queue = QUEUE_MANAGER.queue(:my_queue)
100.times { queue << "In /dev/null, noone can hear you scream..." }
## Nothing actually gets sent to the beanstalkd process

Using Beanstalk::Queue

Use the Beanstalk::Queue API to push messages on to the queue and consume messages. This amounts to using Beanstalk::Queue#push (or Beanstalk::Queue#<<) to add messages to the queue, and Beanstalk::Queue#next_message to retrieve messages. Note that you do not need to transform the data into YAML – this is performed automatically by the queue.

queue << [1,2,3]
# => "---\n1\n2\n3" # YAML version ends up on the queue

queue.next_message
# => [1,2,3] # YAML deserialization is performed automatically