LARAVEL: Is re queue a job is a bad idea? - php

Question

I would like to know re queueing a laravel job is a bad idea or not. i had a scenario where i need to pull users post from facebook once they integrated there facebook account to my application. i want to pull {x} days historic data. facebook api like any other api limit there api request per minute. i keep track the request headers and once rate limit reached i saved those information in database and for each re queue i check whether i am eligible to make a call to facebook api
here is the code snippet for a better visualization
<?php
namespace App\Jobs;
class FacebookData implements ShouldQueue
{
/**
* The number of seconds the job can run before timing out.
*
* #var int
*/
public $timeout = 120;
public $userid;
public function __construct($id)
{
$this->userid=$id;
}
public function handle()
{
if($fbhelper->canPullData())
{
$res=$fbhelper->getData($user->id);
if($res['code']==429)
{
$fbhelper->storeRetryAfter($res);
self::dispatch($user->id);
}
}
}
}
The above snippet is a rough idea. is this a good idea? the reason why i post this question is the self::dispatch($user->id); looks like a recursion and it will try until $fbhelper->canPullData() returns true.that probably will take 6 minutes.i am worried about any impact would happen in my application.Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Retrying job is not a bad idea, it is just build into jobs design already. Laravel have retries for this matter, that jobs can do unreliable operations.
As an example in a project i have been working on, an external API we are working with has 1-5 http 500 errors per 100 requests we are sending. This is thou handled by the built in retry functionality of Laravel.
As of Laravel 5.4 you can set it in the class like so. This will do exactly what you want, without defining the logic. Finally for hitting the retry limit, you can define a function called retryAfter(), which specifies when the job should be retried.
class FacebookData {
public $tries = 5;
public function retryAfter() {
//wait 6 minutes
return 360;
}
}
If you want to keep your logic where you only retry 429 errors, i would use the inverse of that to delete the job, if its anything else than a 429.
if ($res['code'] !== 429) {
$this->delete();
}