Laravel Queues

To run Laravel Queues on AWS Lambda using Amazon SQS (opens in a new tab), we don't want to run the php artisan queue:work command. Instead, we create a Lambda function that is invoked immediately when there are new jobs to process.

To create the SQS queue (and the permissions for the Lambda functions to read/write to it), we can either do that manually, or use serverless.yml.

To make things simpler, we will use the Serverless Lift (opens in a new tab) plugin to create and configure the SQS queue.

First install the Lift plugin:

serverless plugin install -n serverless-lift

Then use the Queue construct (opens in a new tab) in serverless.yml:

provider:
    # ...
    environment:
        # ...
        QUEUE_CONNECTION: sqs
        SQS_QUEUE: ${construct:jobs.queueUrl}
 
functions:
    # ...
 
constructs:
    jobs:
        type: queue
        worker:
            handler: Bref\LaravelBridge\Queue\QueueHandler
            runtime: php-81
            timeout: 60 # seconds

We define Laravel environment variables in provider.environment (this could also be done in the deployed .env file):

• QUEUE_CONNECTION: sqs enables the SQS queue connection
• SQS_QUEUE: ${construct:jobs.queueUrl} passes the URL of the created SQS queue

If you want to create the SQS queue manually, you will need to set these variables. AWS credentials (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY) are automatically set up with the appropriate permissions for Laravel to use the SQS queue.

That's it! Anytime a job is pushed to Laravel Queues, it will be sent to SQS, and SQS will invoke our "worker" function so that it is processed.

How it works

When integrated with AWS Lambda, SQS has a built-in retry mechanism and storage for failed messages. These features work slightly differently than Laravel Queues. The "Bref for Laravel" integration does not use these SQS features.

Instead, "Bref for Laravel" makes all the feature of Laravel Queues work out of the box, just like on any server. Read more in the Laravel Queues documentation (opens in a new tab).