pqueue-tiny

A tiny concurrency-limited promise queue with priorities, AbortSignal support, and an onIdle() awaitable. Zero dependencies.

import { PQueue } from "pqueue-tiny";

const q = new PQueue({ concurrency: 5 });

for (const url of urls) {
  q.add(() => fetch(url));
}
await q.onIdle();

// With priority
q.add(() => urgent(), { priority: 10 });

// With per-task abort
const ac = new AbortController();
q.add(() => slowJob(), { signal: ac.signal });
ac.abort();  // cancels if not yet started

Install

npm install pqueue-tiny

Works with Node 20+, browsers, Bun, Deno. ESM + CJS.

Why

p-queue is excellent but ~10KB minified with lots of options you usually don't need. pqueue-tiny is ~150 lines covering 90% of real use cases: bounded concurrency, priorities, abort, idle waiting.

Recipes

Bulk URL fetcher (rate-limit kindness)

import { PQueue } from "pqueue-tiny";

async function fetchAll(urls: string[]) {
  const q = new PQueue({ concurrency: 5 });
  const results = urls.map((u) => q.add(() => fetch(u).then((r) => r.json())));
  return Promise.all(results);
}

Background queue with priorities

import { PQueue } from "pqueue-tiny";

const q = new PQueue({ concurrency: 2 });

// Background indexing — low priority
q.add(() => indexDocument(doc), { priority: 0 });

// User clicked save — high priority
q.add(() => saveImmediately(data), { priority: 100 });

Cancel a specific job

import { PQueue } from "pqueue-tiny";

const q = new PQueue({ concurrency: 1 });
const ac = new AbortController();

const promise = q.add(() => slowProcessing(), { signal: ac.signal });
// User cancels:
ac.abort(new Error("user cancelled"));
// `promise` rejects with that error if the job was still pending; if running, completes naturally.

Drain on shutdown

import { PQueue } from "pqueue-tiny";

const q = new PQueue({ concurrency: 4 });

process.on("SIGTERM", async () => {
  console.log(`draining ${q.inFlight} jobs...`);
  await q.onIdle();
  process.exit(0);
});

Combine with pmap-bounded

For sequential Promise.all semantics with concurrency, prefer pmap-bounded. For a long-lived job queue with priorities and abort, use pqueue-tiny.

API

new PQueue(opts?)

Option	Type	Default
concurrency	number	1
signal	AbortSignal	— — aborting cancels all pending tasks; running tasks are not interrupted

q.add(fn, opts?): Promise<T>

Option	Type	Default
priority	number	0 — higher served first; FIFO within equal priority
signal	AbortSignal	per-task; aborts only this task and only if it's still waiting

Other methods / props

• q.size — pending tasks waiting
• q.pending — tasks currently running
• q.inFlight — both combined
• q.onIdle(): Promise<void> — resolves when both reach 0
• q.clear() — drop waiting tasks (their promises reject)

Caveats

• Aborting a queue doesn't kill running tasks — only refuses to schedule new ones and rejects waiting tasks. To kill a running task, pass its own signal to the underlying operation.
• No retry built in — combine with @p-vbordei/pretry inside the task function.
• In-memory only. For a persistent queue across restarts, use a real job queue (BullMQ, etc.).

License

Apache-2.0 © Vlad Bordei