Getting Stuff Done: Working with Queues in Drupal

Processing large volumes of data in a long-running task is neither performant nor scalable.  If you've ever had to bulk update entities with an update hook and Batch API, or with a script run via drush, you know what I'm talking about.  If you've ever had to send thousands of emails with Drupal and a hook_cron() implementation, you know how tricky that can be to process them all in a reasonable amount of time.

What if there was another way to process lots of jobs in a fast, safe, and scalable manner?  In this session, I will introduce you to Drupal's Queue API and the database queue, which are baked into Drupal core.  We'll discuss:

• When to use queues
• Types of database queues in Drupal
• Queue workers, including how to build your own scalable, dynamic queue workers
• Automated testing of queues and queue workers