My tasks don't seem to be running as a background process

Question

I have my plugin working now so that I can email users who's accounts will expire in 7 days time. The users are being selected correctly and the emails are being sent as expected. However, the tasks don't seem to be running in the background. I was expecting that when I hit the controller the task will be triggered and the page would immediately return saying "emails sent". Instead it seems it waits until the emails are sent before returning "emails sent". I'm worried that if the number of emails is large the page will timeout before it completes. It was my understanding that tasks run as a background process but may I have miss understood. Can anyone explain them to me in more detail?

For reference here is the controller and the service of my plugin:

class AcmeNotifications_NotificationsController extends BaseController
{

// let anyone run the controller actions
protected $allowAnonymous = array('actionSendEmail');

public function actionSendEmail()
{
    craft()->acmeNotifications_notifications->sendReminderEmail();

    //Make sure we kick the task off

    if (!craft()->tasks->isTaskRunning())
    {
        $task = craft()->tasks->getNextPendingTask();

        if ($task)
        {
            craft()->tasks->runPendingTasks();
        }
    }

    craft()->end();
}
}

and:

class AcmeNotifications_NotificationsService extends BaseApplicationComponent
{
public function sendReminderEmail()
{
    //Get all users whos account will expire in 7 days
    $user_criteria = craft()->elements->getCriteria(ElementType::User);

    $user_criteria->userExpiryDate = date('Y-m-d',strtotime("+7 days"));

    $users = $user_criteria->find();



    if($users){
        //Create array of user email addresses
        $user_emails = array();
        foreach ($users as $user) {
            $user_emails[] = array("to" => $user->email);
        }

        //Create an EmailModel
        $email = new EmailModel;

        //Set the global attributes 
        $email->fromName = 'Joe Blogs';
        $email->fromEmail = '[email protected]';
        $email->subject     = 'Your account will expire in 7 days';
        $email->htmlBody    = 'The message';

        //Create the RecipientsModel and add the user emails
        $recipients = new Mailer_RecipientsModel();
        $recipients->recipients = $user_emails;

        if( $recipients->validate()){
            //Create mailer task
            craft()->mailer_main->newMailer($recipients, $email); 
        }

        echo "emails sent";
    }
    else{
        echo "no emails to send";
    }
}


} 

Answer 1

You are right about the Tasks running in the background. If the Task is just sending a few mails, it might be done before your site is loaded, thus creating this impression.

Check:

• Change the Batch Size of the Mailer plugin to 1 and the waiting time to 120 seconds.
• Change the $user_criteria to fetch 2 users.
• Run your controller

It should now take about 2 minutes for the Task to finish, if your site loads faster it was just an impression.

---

Code:

You should however separate your code a bit more, because right now you are mixing Controllers and Services.

Your Service shouldn't output anything, it should just return a value, (e.g. boolen), and your Controller should then output the message:

Service {
    //Create Task etc...

    if ($itWorked == true) {
       return true;
    }
    else {
       return false;
    }
}

/* ------------------------ */

Controller {
    if ( FunctionService() ) {
       echo 'It worked';
    }
    else {
       echo 'Something went wrong';
    }
}

Also the "Make sure we kick the task off"-part, should go into your Service.

P.S. I see you are using my plugin :), if you need any help, create an issue over on github.