💎 Resque::UniqueInQueue

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I've summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

🌻 Synopsis

resque-unique_in_queue prevents duplicate Resque jobs from being enqueued in the same queue. A job including Resque::Plugins::UniqueInQueue is identified by its class and serialized arguments; matching enqueue attempts are ignored until its uniqueness key is released or expires.

This is enqueue-time uniqueness. It does not prevent two workers from executing duplicate work that was already present in Redis; use resque-unique_at_runtime for that guarantee.

💡 Info you can shake a stick at

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Works with MRI Ruby 2
Support & Community
Source
Documentation
Compliance
Style
Maintainer 🎖️
... 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatibility

Compatible with MRI Ruby 2.3.0+, and concordant releases of JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 2.4+. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem's runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

The amazing test matrix is powered by the kettle-dev stack.

How kettle-dev manages complexity in tests

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kettle-soup-cover	GitHub	SimpleCov coverage policy and reporting
kettle-test	GitHub	standard test runner and coverage harness
rubocop-lts	GitHub	Ruby-version-aware linting
turbo_tests2	GitHub	parallel test execution

Federated DVCS

Find this repo on federated forges (Coming soon!)

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Enterprise Support

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

Need enterprise-level guarantees?

The maintainers of this and thousands of other packages are working with Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the open source packages you use to build your applications. Save time, reduce risk, and improve code health, while paying the maintainers of the exact packages you use.

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Alternatively:

• 
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• 

✨ Installation

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add resque-unique_in_queue

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install resque-unique_in_queue

⚙️ Configuration

Configure application defaults before jobs are enqueued:

Resque::UniqueInQueue.configure do |config|
  config.lock_after_execution_period = 0
  config.ttl = -1
  config.unique_in_queue_key_base = "r-uiq"
end

lock_after_execution_period keeps the key after a job leaves the queue; 0 removes it immediately. ttl is the Redis key expiry in seconds; -1 leaves the key without an expiry. Jobs may override the first two settings with @lock_after_execution_period and @ttl.

Keep unique_in_queue_key_base global for the application. Per-job key bases make cleanup and cross-queue inspection unreliable. Set RESQUE_DEBUG=true (or a value containing queue) to enable plugin debug logging.

🔧 Basic Usage

resque-unique_in_queue utilizes 3 class instance variables that can be set in your Jobs, in addition to the standard @queue. Here they are, with their default values:

@lock_after_execution_period = 0
@ttl = -1
@unique_in_queue_key_base = "r-uiq".freeze

The last one, in normal circumstances, shouldn't be set as different per class, or uniqueness cleanup becomes more difficult.

It should be set only once, globally:

Resque::UniqueInQueue.configuration.unique_in_queue_key_base = "my-custom"

class UpdateCat
  include Resque::Plugins::UniqueInQueue

  @queue = :cats

  def self.perform(cat_id)
    # do something
  end
end

If you attempt to queue a unique job multiple times, it is ignored:

Resque.enqueue UpdateCat, 1
=> true
Resque.enqueue UpdateCat, 1
=> nil
Resque.enqueue UpdateCat, 1
=> nil
Resque.size :cats
=> 1
Resque.enqueued? UpdateCat, 1
=> true
Resque.enqueued_in? :dogs, UpdateCat, 1
=> false

Options

lock_after_execution_period

By default, lock_after_execution_period is 0 and enqueued? becomes false as soon as the job is being worked on.

The lock_after_execution_period setting can be used to delay when the unique job key is deleted (i.e. when enqueued? becomes false). For example, if you have a long-running unique job that takes around 10 seconds, and you don't want to requeue another job until you are sure it is done, you could set lock_after_execution_period = 20. Or if you never want to run a long running job more than once per minute, set lock_after_execution_period = 60.

class UpdateCat
  include Resque::Plugins::UniqueInQueue

  @queue = :cats
  @lock_after_execution_period = 20

  def self.perform(cat_id)
    # do something
  end
end

Oops, I have stale Queue Time uniqueness keys...

Preventing jobs with matching signatures from being queued, and they never get dequeued because there is no actual corresponding job to dequeue.

How to deal?

Option: Rampage

# Delete *all* queued jobs in the queue, and
#   delete *all* unqueness keys for the queue.
Redis.remove_queue("queue_name")

Option: Butterfly

# Delete *no* queued jobs at all, and
#   delete *all* unqueness keys for the queue (might then allow duplicates).
Resque::UniqueInQueue::Queue.cleanup("queue_name")

🦷 FLOSS Funding

While resque tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of... "dollars" would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, Open Collective is our preferred funding platform.

If you're working in a company that's making significant use of resque tools we'd appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a resque sponsor.

You can support the development of resque tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, PayPal, Open Collective and Tidelift.

📍 NOTE
If doing a sponsorship in the form of donation is problematic for your company from an accounting standpoint, we'd recommend the use of Tidelift, where you can get a support-like subscription instead.

Open Collective for Individuals

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

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Another way to support open-source

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

🔐 Security

See SECURITY.md.

🤝 Contributing

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, or if it is already 💯 (see below) check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

🚀 Release Instructions

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code Coverage

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🪇 Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting with this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

🌈 Contributors

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/resque/resque-unique_in_queue/-/graphs/main

⭐️ Star History

📌 Versioning

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("resque-unique_in_queue", "~> 2.0")

📌 Is "Platform Support" part of the public API? More details inside.

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

📄 License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

© Copyright

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

Copyright holders

• Copyright (c) 2013-2017 Tee Parham
• Copyright (c) 2016 MaksMasalitin
• Copyright (c) 2018, 2026 Peter H. Boling
• Copyright (c) 2019 Daniel Cunha
• Copyright (c) 2026 Max Lewis

🤑 A request for help

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I'm hoping to be able to pay for my kids' health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help, use the RubyForum or Discord.

To say "thanks!" ☝️ Join the community or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌 💌

Please give the project a star ⭐ ♥.

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️

Field	Value
Package	resque-unique_in_queue
Description	💎 A resque plugin that ensures job uniqueness at enqueue time.
Homepage	https://github.com/resque/resque-unique_in_queue
Source	https://github.com/resque/resque-unique_in_queue
License	MIT
Funding	https://github.com/sponsors/pboling, https://ko-fi.com/pboling, https://liberapay.com/pboling/donate, https://opencollective.com/resque, https://thanks.dev/u/gh/pboling, https://tidelift.com/funding/github/rubygems/resque-unique_in_queue, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pboling