Laravel Queues on Uberspace

This article has been published a while ago.

If this is a technical article some information might be out of date. If something is terribly broken, let me know and I will update the article accordingly.

Back in 2015, I've rewritten ImguBox. The old version didn't have any tests nor a well-built foundation. I used Queues, but not in the right way. I used Irons Push Queues which got removed from the Laravel Core in version 5.* and created a high load on the server (You can DDOS yourself!).

I knew there where other solutions like Beanstalk or AWS but I wanted to keep the tech-stack as small as possible. I used Laravels database Queue Driver. Queues are stored in a local database table and processed by the Laravel application itself through php artisan queue:work. But how can I trigger the queue:work command on my host? Uberspace doesn't allow me to install supervisor? Thankfully we can use Daemontools.

Prepare your server #

Use the following command to create your own ~/service folder. (Skip this step if you're already used daemons on your server)

uberspace-setup-svscan

Create the scripts #

First, you need to create a script which is executed by the daemon. I collect all my daemon-scripts in ~/etc/ and prefix them with run-. Let's create the file ~/etc/run-acme-worker and store the following script in it. Check the command near exec, you have to adjust it to your own project!

#!/bin/sh

# These environment variables are sometimes needed by the running daemons
export USER=YOUR_UBERSPACE_NAME
export HOME=/home/YOUR_UBERSPACE_NAME

# Include the user-specific profile
source $HOME/.bash_profile

# Now let's go!
exec /package/host/localhost/php-5.6.6/bin/php /var/www/virtual/$USER/html/acme-project/artisan queue:work database --queue=high,low --daemon  2>&1

Don't forget to make the script executable:

chmod +x run-acme-worker

Don't forget to make the script executable:

chmod +x run-acme-worker

Link your service #

Now you can link your new worker with daemontools. Uberspace provides a neat little helper for this.

uberspace-setup-service run-acme-worker ~/etc/run-acme-worker

Start / Restart / Stop your Laravel Worker #

Now you can start, restart or stop your worker with the following commands:

Start: svc -u ~/service/run-acme-worker
Stop: svc -d ~/service/run-acme-worker
Restart: svc -du ~/service/run-acme-worker