Posted on Jun 30, 2024

Cronless queue:work in Laravel executed in background

There are some approaches how to execute queue:work but I found them useless. Here is a solution for most shared hostings that:

does not require additional route
does not require remotely visiting website
does not require shell access
does not require cron access
requires bash with flock on server (for single execution protection)
requires PHP exec function available
requires shell php command (php-cli installed on server)
runs in the background so makes no website slowdowns
can be set to execute not more than once between minimum time span of $runEverySec seconds

1. Let's create new Middleware:

$ php artisan make:middleware QueueWorkMiddleware

2. Use it as global middleware in `bootstrap/app.php`:

... ->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) { $middleware->append(App\Http\Middleware\QueueWorkMiddleware::class); }) ...

3. Put contents to `App/Middleware/QueueWorkMiddleware.php`:

<?php namespace App\Http\Middleware; use Closure; use Illuminate\Http\Request; use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response; class QueueWorkMiddleware { // lock file that prevents too many executions public $lockFile = 'queue.lock'; // log from queue command public $logFile = 'queue.log'; // log from background exec command public $execLogFile = 'exec.log'; // pid of executed command public $pidFile = 'queue.pid'; // php command path public $phpExec = '/usr/bin/php'; // queue:work command public $queueCmd = 'artisan queue:work --stop-when-empty'; // minimum time in seconds between executions public $runEverySec = 10; /** * Handle an incoming request. * * @param \Closure(\Illuminate\Http\Request): (\Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response) $next */ public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response { // get pid and lock file names $pidFile = base_path()."/".$this->pidFile; $lockFile = base_path()."/".$this->lockFile; if( // if there is no lock file and !file_exists($lockFile) && // there is no pid file (queue was never executed before) // or time between pidfile modification is more or equal $runEverySec (!file_exists($pidFile) || (time()-filemtime(base_path()."/{$this->pidFile}") >= $this->runEverySec)) ) { // do the work $this->work(); } return $next($request); } public function work() { // file names $basePath = base_path(); $lockFile = "{$basePath}/{$this->lockFile}"; $logFile = "{$basePath}/{$this->logFile}"; $execLogFile = "{$basePath}/{$this->execLogFile}"; $pidFile = base_path()."/".$this->pidFile; // main queue command and lock file removal $cmd = "{ {$this->phpExec} {$this->queueCmd} > {$logFile} 2>&1; rm {$lockFile}; }"; // go to base path and run command by flock (this guarantees single execution only!) $cmd = "cd {$basePath} && flock -n {$lockFile} --command '{$cmd}'"; // execute command in background exec(sprintf("%s > {$execLogFile} 2>&1 & echo $! >> %s", $cmd, $pidFile)); return true; } }