Queueing Jobs and Managing Queues

Some tasks — sending emails, generating reports, processing uploads — take too long to run inline during a web request. Laravel's queue system lets that work happen in the background instead.

Creating a Job

php artisan make:job ProcessPodcast

class ProcessPodcast implements ShouldQueue
{
    use Queueable;

    public function __construct(public Podcast $podcast) {}

    public function handle(): void
    {
        // long-running processing here
    }
}

Dispatching a Job

ProcessPodcast::dispatch($podcast);

Running the Queue Worker

php artisan queue:work

This command starts a long-running process that pulls jobs off the queue one at a time and executes them.

Queue Drivers

• database — simple, stores jobs in a table
• redis — fast, production-friendly
• sync — runs jobs immediately, useful for local testing

The database driver is fine to start with, but production applications almost always move to something faster and more reliable — most commonly Redis.