In modern web applications, background job processing is essential for improving performance and user experience. Ruby on Rails offers a powerful tool for this purpose: Active Job. In this blog post, we’ll explore what Active Job is, how to set it up, and how to use it effectively in your Rails application.

What is Active Job?

Active Job is a framework for declaring jobs and making them run on a variety of queueing backends. It is included in Rails by default and provides a standardized interface for interacting with different queuing systems like Sidekiq, Resque, Delayed Job, and others.

Why Use Active Job?

• Decoupling: Move time-consuming tasks out of your request-response cycle, improving app responsiveness.

• Retries and Failures: Handle job failures and retries gracefully.

• Scheduling: Run tasks at specific times or intervals.

​​Scheduling: Run tasks at specific times or intervals.

        1. Adding a Queue Adapter

​Rails supports several queue adapters. By default, it uses the :async adapter which is suitable for development but not for production.

For production, you might choose Sidekiq, Resque, or another adapter. For this guide, we'll use Sidekiq. First, add the Sidekiq gem to your Gemfile:

Run bundle install to install the gem. 

 

        2. ​​Configuring Active Job

Next, configure your application to use Sidekiq by setting the queue adapter in config/application.rb:

Ensure you have Redis installed and running, as Sidekiq relies on Redis. 

 

        3. Creating a Job

Generate a new job using the Rails generator:

This creates a new job file in app/jobs/example_job.rb 

 

        4. Enqueuing Jobs