Backgrounded 2.0 beta is now available with some really exciting changes. I’ve taken this release as an opportunity to critically evaluate the perfect API for invoking background jobs. The new API is _not_backwards compatible with previous versions, but it is SEXY as HELL!

class User
 # instance method to do some stuff
 def do_stuff
 end

 # class method to do something else
 def self.do_something_else
 end
end

# execute class method in background
User.backgrounded.do_something_else

user = User.new
# execute instance method in background
user.backgrounded.do_stuff

Oh snap…Did you see what happened there? I just ran class and instance methods in the background with no code changes whatsoever! This new API allows for _any_method on _any_ruby object to be executed in the background. But that’s not all! The new API also simplified passing custom options into the background handlers (which is awesome for resque users).

# execute instance method on a custom resque queue
user.backgrounded(:queue => 'custom').do_stuff

It’s glorious…

Extension Gems

One of Backgrounded’s core missions is to be a simple and lightweight wrapper around any background processing framework. With this release, I’ve decided to extract logic for each library into separate gems. This helps simplify the core testsuite and makes it more extensible in the long run to release updates to specific libraries without bumping the core library version.

The backgrounded-resque gem is now available on github.

Bundler config

gem 'backgrounded-resque'

If any other developers are interested in building a backgrounded wrapper, spin up a gem and drop me a line!

after_commit_backgrounded Callback

Using ActiveRecord callbacks to perform background work is an extremely common pattern. Background jobs should only be invoked after the data has been committed to the database to ensure that the background job will have access to the recent changes and backgrounded now makes it even easier to do the “right thing”.

The after_commit_backgrounded callback is just like your standard Rails after_commit hook with a few minor upgrades. It executes the referenced method in the background (duh), and it allows for an optional :backgrounded option to customize the options for the Backgrounded::Handler.

class User  # execute :do_something in the background
 after_commit_backgrounded :do_something

 # execute :do_something_else in the background
 # passing custom options to the backgrounded handler
 after_commit_backgrounded :do_something_else, \
   :backgrounded => {:priority => :high}
end

Grab the latest beta version via rubygems and send any feedback my way!

gem install backgrounded --pre