Use Sidekiq in Development and Production

ActiveJob is a Rails feature for background job processing.

This means that you can make tasks run in parallel to the rails server request-response cycle in a separate process.

There are different adapter tools for processing ActiveJobs.

Previously I wrote about processing ActiveJobs with gem good_job and Postgres without Redis.

Jobs vs Services #

This tweet was a real “paradigm shift” for me:

Since I read this post, I do not create a “/services” folder in my Rails apps. Instead, I put everything under “/jobs”

Install Sidekiq #

Gem Sidekiq might be the most popular ActiveJob adapter. It uses Redis database to store a que of jobs that should be performed, and their execution statuses.

# Gemfile
# bundle add sidekiq
gem 'sidekiq'

Run sidekiq in a separate terminal tab, or add it to Procfile.dev

# Procfile.dev
web: bin/rails server -p 3000
css: bin/rails tailwindcss:watch
+worker: bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -q default

By default, ActiveJob runs within with your rails server in development. Enforce sidekiq for the development environment:

# config/environments/development.rb
  config.active_job.queue_adapter = :sidekiq

Sidekiq provides a dashboard to view the execution statuses of all your jobs.

Enable the dashboard in routes:

# config/routes.rb
mount Sidekiq::Web => '/sidekiq'

Now you can visit http://localhost:3000/sidekiq to view the dashboard! 🥳

Enable access to the sidekiq dashboard only for authenticated admin users:

# config/routes.rb
require 'sidekiq/web'
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  authenticate :user, ->(user) { user.admin? } do
    mount Sidekiq::Web => '/sidekiq'
  end
end

Deploy to production and use Sidekiq with Redis #

There are 3 things you need to do:

1. Enable sidekiq for production:

# config/environments/production.rb
  config.active_job.queue_adapter = :sidekiq

1. Create a worker with the run command bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -q default (heroku example):

1. Install Redis and provide the REDIS_URL to your worker (render example):

That’s it! 🎬