Asynchronous Task Processing With Heroku
Before exploring Asynchronous Task Processing With Heroku, we must understand what Asynchronous task processing is.
Asynchronous means you can execute numerous things at once and do not have to wait for one thing to end to unblock the other. You work in sync and work on several things simultaneously.
That’s the goal of the asynchronous tasks - To allow you to multitask.
When you write code, the execution of code gets difficult when the execution of the next code can only start when the first one’s processing gets completed. And sometimes, to execute the entire code, you need to work on tasks without one blocking the other. Asynchronously completing tasks means you can do them with no hurdles in between.
With an Asynchronous way of processing tasks, several things get cooked up altogether without facing a blockage.
Let’s take a look at an example. When a student wishes to fast-track their career growth, they might choose to do some extra training. They might sign up for various diplomas and certificates and complete them in a certain period of time. To do so will be an Asynchronous type of training.
However, students who want to put their complete attention on one degree and only do one course at a time are doing synchronous tasks.
It’s not necessarily important to execute all codes parallelly or use the Asynchronous approach only. But, often, an Asynchronous approach works better than synchronous.
Using Iron MQ on Heroku
If you are looking to use asynchronous tasks processing on Heroku, try using the IronMQ Heroku add-on. IronMQ can take care of all of your asynchronous tasks processing and is already built into the Heroku platform.
Read more to check out how to do it and get an overview of the most important information.
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Using Async Instead of Await Codes
What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous approaches, and what are some examples of them? To answer that question, let’s explore Async & Await commands.
Suppose you are a chef in a restaurant and you are asked to prepare a coffee, omelet, pasta, and a sandwich, all for the same table. Being a chef, you would start by putting the pasta on the stove to get cooked. Meanwhile, you would complete the chopping for sandwich and omelet, and when those are at the verge of being done, you would pour the coffee so that you serve everything hot.
Well, when you do the work this way, you are working Asynchronously (in a thread). However, if you start by cooking the pasta and completing it, then start to make sandwiches, then the omelet, and then a coffee, you won’t be able to serve everything hot. That would be an example doing the synchronous way of executing things.
Now, applying this analogy to code, if you use await in the code, like:
Pasta = await PastaTask;
Omelet = await OmeletteTask;
Your computer will wait for one task to complete before starting the next task. Working this way would need multiple threads, and in a restaurant, a dozen chefs to serve the entire restaurant. However, if you use: “namespace AsyncRestaurantOrder” and write the entire code inside it, the chef can access all the things that need attention and serve everything hot at once.
Thus, async is better to use in code than using await. When you write code today, it’s necessary to make the User Interface quick and responsive. You can’t let the site freeze on the user’s device when downloading the data.
While writing the server programs, you can’t let the threads get blocked, as those threads might be serving other requests too. So, if you use async and not await, your ability to scale applications inexpensively gets better, and the tasks are performed smoothly too.
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Asynchronous Task Processing With Heroku
In many scenarios, when you want to start several tasks immediately, it’s not always possible to create multiple threads at once. As the food serving analogy defines, it’s possible to complete several works simultaneously in parallel concurrent processing only when you give your tasks an Asynchronous approach.
As we are looking at how to get the tasks done asynchronously, let’s dive into the Heroku add-ons to scale your background jobs and set up your message queues.
By integrating these Heroku add-ons into your existing applications you can get the jobs done asynchronously and smoothly. Let’s see the features, benefits, and usage of these add-ons.
Processing Tasks With Iron Message Queue Heroku Add-On
Message Queues are best for the coordination and communication of the distributed applications. MQ helps simplify coding significantly for decoupled applications. This keeps the app always running, with improved, scalable performance, and most importantly, reliably. Thus, for an organization, it’s valuable to have a reliable message queue setup: Heroku’s IronMQ Message Queue is here to make the task easier.
Easy to set up
To set up IronMQ is not just easy, you can set it up in just a few minutes with five simple steps:
- For Heroku - Install the IronWorker Add-on.
- Install Iron’s client Library and CLI tool.
- It’s configuration time - Retrieve the token and project Id.
- You can now upload code or register Docker Images. With this, your deployment gets completed.
- Now, you can access clients, retrieve the task list, start pushing jobs, add workers and use all the functions it offers.
Integration With Application
The IronMQ language libraries include PHP, Ruby, Go, Python, .NET, Java, and more languages. You are free to use any language, as IronMQ speaks it all.
Features:
- Push, Pull, Error Queues
- REST Based API
- Dedicated Cluster
- Automated Failover
- FIFO & One Time Delivery
- Reliable Support
- Unlimited Queues
Benefits
- Fast Setup
- Durable Secure
- Reliable Queues
- Easy Integration
- Customized Solutions
- Meet User Demand
- No Server Management
- 14-Days Free Trial
- Configure Individual Queues With No Extra Code Learning
Usage
- Decoupling Dependencies
- Redundancy via persistence
- Handle Traffic Spikes By scaling
- Increase loading time of application
- Transaction Ordering
- Batching for efficiency
- Asynchronous communication
- Creates Resiliency
If you want to have a reliable communication layer for better visibility and control over the data in the messages, you must get Heroku’s Iron Message Queue add-on.
Processing Tasks With IronWorker Heroku Add-On
Background processing refers to executing tasks in different threads and not the main thread, where users interact with our application. The background tasks have to be managed because we can’t let our users get a frozen web page when they are on our site.
If these background activities of threads are not managed parallelly but instead wait for one task to complete to start another it will be disappointing for the users. It’s better to get the Heroku IronWorker Add-on which acts as a scalable worker processing your background jobs using Docker containers.
If you want to read about the setup it’s the same as the steps for IronMQ (above). Using those steps, you can start using Heroku IronWorker Add-on.
Integrate With Your Existing Application
IronWorkers is not platform-specific. It means you can use any coding language you are comfortable with. You can write workers in PHP, .NET, Ruby, NodeJS, Python, Java, and Go.
Features
- Asynchronous Task processing
- High Ram/CPU Instance
- Dedicated Clusters
- Autoscaling
- No Server Management
- Reliable Support
- Language & Cloud Agnostic
- You can subscribe to get your own virtual private cloud for High Volume Processing
- You can Automate Jobs by scheduling them
Benefits
- Quick Setup
- Easily integrate
- High Reliability
- Speeds up the workflow
- You can get customized solutions
- Meet user demands seamlessly
- Use any of the above-mentioned languages.
- Free 14-Days Trial
Usage
- You can do videos and image processing
- Send push notifications
- Email Delivery
- Cron Replacement
- ETL processing
If the goal of your organization is to deploy tasks quickly and inexpensively so you can have complete control over the interface, and reduce the risk of giving users a negative experience - having Heroku’s IronWorker add-on integrated into your application will be of great benefit.
Final Thoughts
In this post, we explored what asynchronous and synchronous means. With the restaurant analogy, we now have a better understanding of the reasons why await is not better than the Async command. It’s also clear how asynchronous tasks often work better for the application codes and in the restaurants’ kitchens too.
In essence, asynchronous task processing is much better, more productive, less time-consuming, and inexpensive, and we recommend all organizations switch to it for most of their tasks. Heroku, contributing to making the task processing easier, has come with the add-ons like Iron MQ and Iron Worker, which lets you process tasks asynchronously.
Loaded with responsive features, easy setup, quick integration, no server management, and many other benefits, they are easy to integrate with your applications.
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