"Best way" to run Laravel queue listen - laravel

Question

Currently I'm working on a project where I queue emails to be send. However I wonder what would be the "best way" to run the queue listener. Right now I only know about the nohup way.
However, by using nohup it feels like the queue listener is no part of the application anymore. It's like using the scheduler to make your cronjobs more part of the application.
Are there any other ways to listen the queue and what would be your preference?

Answer 1

Here's what I wrote to achieve this:
app/Console/Commands/QueueProcessListener.php
<?php
namespace App\Console\Commands;
use Illuminate\Console\Command;
class QueueProcessListener extends Command
{
/**
* The name of the command/process we want to monitor. This string will be used both to check to see if the process
* is currently running and to spawn it (The arguments are appended to it).
*
* #var string
*/
protected $command = 'php artisan queue:listen';
/**
* The arguments to pass to the process when spawning it.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $arguments = '--tries=3';
/**
* The signature of the console command. We use the signature when running it through Artisan: php artisan $signature
*
* #var string
*/
protected $signature = 'queue-process-listener';
/**
* The console command description.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $description = 'Monitor the queue listener process to ensure it is always running.';
/**
* Create a new command instance.
*/
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
}
/**
* Execute the console command.
*
* #return mixed
*/
public function handle()
{
if (!$this->isProcessRunning($this->command)) {
$this->info("Starting queue listener.");
$this->executeShellCommand($this->command, $this->arguments, true);
} else {
$this->info("Queue listener is running.");
}
}
/**
* Execute a shell command, with the provided arguments, and optionally in the background. Commands that are not run
* in the background will return their output/response.
*
* #param $command
* #param string $arguments
* #param bool $background
* #return string
*/
public function executeShellCommand($command, $arguments = '', $background = false)
{
$command = trim($command);
if (!is_string($command) || empty($command)) {
return null;
}
$arguments = trim($arguments);
$cmd = trim($command . ' ' . $arguments) . ($background ? ' > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &' : '');
return shell_exec($cmd);
}
/**
* Check if a process is running using pgrep.
*
* #param $process
* #return bool
*/
public function isProcessRunning($process)
{
$output = $this->executeShellCommand('pgrep -f "' . $process . '"');
return !empty(trim($output));
}
}
app/Console/Kernel.php
<?php
namespace App\Console;
use Illuminate\Console\Scheduling\Schedule;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Console\Kernel as ConsoleKernel;
class Kernel extends ConsoleKernel
{
/**
* The Artisan commands provided by your application.
*
* #var array
*/
protected $commands = [
Commands\QueueProcessListener::class
];
/**
* Define the application's command schedule.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Console\Scheduling\Schedule $schedule
* #return void
*/
protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
// Schedule my process listener to run every 5 minutes.
$schedule->command('queue-process-listener')->everyFiveMinutes();
}
}

Answer 2

The documentation tells you exactly how to achieve this:
https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/queues#supervisor-configuration
I'm not sure what you mean by it not being "part of the application". Crons and background worker processes are a standard part of any scale server architecture. There's nothing wrong with using them.
You also should really avoid doing what Jonathon's answer suggests, which is basically writing your own supervisord in php. What if your server reboots? There are battle-tested solutions for this problem, that have been developed and supported by the linux community for a long time now--you should really use them.