How to run Play! background jobs on Heroku - heroku

I'm hardly using heroku for my Play! applications nowadays and I am new. I can deploy my web application but background jobs don't run. I tried to add worker but I got this error :
$ heroku scale worker=1
Scaling worker processes... ! No such type as worker
I created a Procfile includes just
web: play run --http.port=$PORT $PLAY_OPTS
It's just for web, I couldn't find expressions to run workers.
How can I run my background jobs on Heroku?

You have to define the worker instead of web:
worker: play run --http.port=$PORT $PLAY_OPTS

Related

Get name of running process (Procfile) inside heroku

My Rails app on Heroku has a number of processes defined in the Procfile
Is there a way for an app to know what process name started it?
e.g. for Procfile:
web: rails s
job: run jobs
Is there an ENV variable (or similar) available within the running process to know if its web or job?
Apparently Heroku sets up DYNO variable, as per https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos#local-environment-variables

Prevent Heroku from starting a web dyno

I'd like to configure a Heroku app to run a scheduled task once per day. My source tree looks like this:
bin/myScript
Procfile
package.json
When I deploy the app, I see the following error:
2017-01-11T04:31:36.660973+00:00 app[web.1]: npm ERR! missing script: start
I believe this is because Heroku tries to spin up a web dyno. I don't have a web dyno, nor do I want one. So I created a Procfile with this line:
heroku ps:scale web=0
To prevent heroku from spinning up a web dyno. That didn't work. What else can I do to prevent my app from crashing upon deployment? Does it matter if the scheduled task is going to be run in a separate one-off Dyno anyway?
You should not have the line "heroku ps:scale web=0" in your Procfile.
Doing so tells heroku to create a process type called "heroku" that attempts to run the following command on any dyno instances instantiated for it: "ps:scale web=0". That would probably generate errors, and at any rate, is not what you intended.
Instead You should run "heroku ps:scale web=0" as a Heroku toolbelt CLI command (or do the equivalent from the Resources tab of the GUI, as you already did).
I think I found a fix: in the "Resources" tab of the GUI for the web, there is a list of dynos with on/off sliders next to them. I switched the web dyno slider to off, and now when I deploy there is no crash. Still, it's unclear to me why the Procfile line was insufficient.

Heroku - how to start job worker (delayed job)?

I have some miniapp that use delayed_job. On my localhost everything works fine, but when I deploy my app to Heroku and click on the link that should be executed by delayed_job, so nothing happen, the "task" is just saved into the table delayed_job.
In this article on heroku blog is written, that the task from delayed_job table is executed, when is run this command rake jobs:work.
But how can I run this command? Where should be the command placed? In the code, or from terminal console?
If you are running the Cedar stack, run the following from the terminal console:
heroku run rake jobs:work
If you are running the older stacks (Bamboo, Aspen, etc.):
heroku rake jobs:work
see: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rake
According to the delayed_job documentation, you can also start a worker programmatically:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../config/environment'
Delayed::Worker.new.start
You should use a Procfile to scpecify the commands for your dynos.
For example you would have something like this in your Procfile:
appDir/Procfile
web: bundle exec rails server -p $PORT
worker: bundle exec rake jobs:work
To use this on your development machine, you should use Foreman, it's all explained at the docs.
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile
In our case we're only running a delayed job once a month, so didn't want to have a worker dyno running constantly.
To solve this we queue up the job (with .delayed) and then use the Heroku platform API to spawn rake jobs:workoff in a one-off worker. The API call returns relatively quickly.
PlatformAPI.connect_oauth(ENV["YOUR_HEROKU_KEY"]).dyno.create(ENV["YOUR_HEROKU_APP_NAME"],{command: 'rake jobs:workoff'})

Running rake tasks to start Resque workers on Heroku

So I have Resque and redis to go set up on Heroku and this is what my resque.rake file looks like:
require 'resque/tasks'
task "resque:setup" => :environment do
ENV['QUEUE'] = '*'
end
desc "Alias for resque:work (To run workers on Heroku)"
task "jobs:work" => "resque:work"
I ran heroku rake jobs:work and got one worker running. This worked perfectly. My background jobs were being completed.
Then I made some changes in my code, pushed to heroku, and still saw that I had one worker running. However, while jobs were being added to the queue, the worker was not receiving any jobs. So I ran heroku rake jobs:work again, it said I had two workers running, and my jobs were being completed.
My question is why did this happen? Do I need to run this rake task every time I push to heroku? Is there a way to automate this? Also, although I have two workers running, there seems to be only one that is working. Is there a way to get back to one worker?
You should use Procfile for resque jobs on heroku http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile
Keep in mind that Procfile is used on new Heroku Cedar Stack.
You only need one worker for Resque. You will need to run heroku rake jobs:work or use Resque-Scheduler (cron, or something to run that task) to to automatically run your jobs.

Resque Scheduler on Heroku... Do it remotely?

I'm adding Resque-Scheduler in my app on Heroku
So... I need ONE alone and distinct worker acting as the scheduler and
many doing the jobs.
This is how I've done it :
I've a distinct Heroku App which does nothing but has 1 resque-scheduler worker, running 24/7, adding Resque tasks to the Redis DB of the "distant" main App.
(I do that mapping jobs:work task to resque:scheduler or resque:work)
Is this the best way to do it on the Heroku's platform ; or am I doing it totally wrong ?
Thanks !
EDIT:
minimal app for scheduling on Heroku :
http://github.com/clmntlxndr/heroku-scheduler
UPDATE: With the new CEDAR stack on Heroku and Procfiles, it's possible to start a distinct task for each worker.
web: bundle exec rails server -p $PORT
scheduler: bundle exec rake resque:scheduler
worker: bundle exec rake jobs:work
http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile
I think I misread your question the first time. I missed the part where scheduler requires a separate rake task.
Yes, I think the only way to do it is to have two separate heroku apps, because heroku workers will only run rake jobs:work and presumably you can only map this onto one of the resque rake tasks.
You could try this:
desc "Alias for resque:work (To run workers on Heroku)"
task "jobs:work" => ["resque:work", "resque:scheduler"]
But I have sincere doubts about that actually working properly with how Heroku monitors worker processes and stuff. Also, double check the rake syntax there; it's just from memory. I know it's possible to specify multiple dependencies though.

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