85 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
title: Queuing Private Messages in Drupal 8
|
||
date: 2018-02-27
|
||
excerpt: Introducing the Private Message Queue module for Drupal 8.
|
||
tags:
|
||
- drupal
|
||
- drupal-8
|
||
- drupal-modules
|
||
- drupal-planet
|
||
- open-source
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
My current project at [Microserve][0] is a Drupal 8 website that uses the
|
||
[Private Message][1] module for users to send messages to each other.
|
||
|
||
In some cases though, the threads could contain hundreds of recipients so I
|
||
decided that it would be good to queue the message requests so that they can be
|
||
processed as part of a background process for better performance. The Private
|
||
Message module does not include this, so I've written and released a separate
|
||
[Private Message Queue][2] module.
|
||
|
||
## Queuing a Message
|
||
|
||
The module provices a `PrivateMessageQueuer` service
|
||
(`private_message_queue.queuer`) which queues the items via the `queue()`
|
||
method.
|
||
|
||
The method accepts an array of `User` objects as the messsage recipients, the
|
||
message body text and another user as the message owner. (I’m currently
|
||
considering [whether to make the owner optional][4], and default to the current
|
||
user if one is not specified)
|
||
|
||
Here is an example:
|
||
|
||
```php
|
||
$recipients = $this->getRecipients(); // An array of User objects.
|
||
$message = 'Some message text';
|
||
$owner = \Drupal::currentUser();
|
||
|
||
$queuer = \Drupal::service('private_message_queue.queuer');
|
||
$queuer->queue($recipients, $message, $owner);
|
||
```
|
||
|
||
These three pieces of data are then saved as part of the queued item. You can
|
||
see these by checking the "queue" table in the database or by running
|
||
`drush queue-list`.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
```
|
||
$ drush queue-list
|
||
Queue Items Class
|
||
private_message_queue 19 Drupal\Core\Queue\DatabaseQueue
|
||
```
|
||
|
||
## Processing the Queue
|
||
|
||
The module also provides a `PrivateMessageQueue` queue worker, which processes
|
||
the queued items. For each item, it creates a new private message setting the
|
||
owner and the message body.
|
||
|
||
It uses the `PrivateMessageThread` class from the Private Message module to find
|
||
for an existing thread for the specified recipients, or creates a new thread if
|
||
one isn't found. The new message is then added to the thread.
|
||
|
||
The queue is processed on each cron run, so I recommend adding a module like
|
||
[Ultimate Cron][3] so that you can process the queued items frequently (e.g.
|
||
every 15 minutes) and run the heavier tasks like checking for updates etc less
|
||
frequently (e.g. once a day).
|
||
|
||
You can also process the queue manually with Drush using the
|
||
`drush queue-run <queue-name>` command - e.g.
|
||
`drush queue-run private_message_queue`.
|
||
|
||
```
|
||
$ drush queue-run private_message_queue
|
||
Processed 19 items from the private_message_queue queue in 3.34 sec.
|
||
```
|
||
|
||
[0]: {{site.companies.microserve.url}}
|
||
[1]: https://www.drupal.org/project/private_message
|
||
[2]: https://www.drupal.org/project/private_message_queue
|
||
[3]: https://www.drupal.org/project/ultimate_cron
|
||
[4]: https://www.drupal.org/project/private_message_queue/issues/2948233
|