Delayed Job not processed in rspec

Question

I am trying to run rspecs for a custom delayed job (GetPage::GetPageJob), but I have a problem.

When I run them, the jobs are well enqueued (that is to say, well inserted in the delayed_jobs table), but they are not processed by the job worker. Indeed, after launching "rake jobs:work RAILS_ENV=test" in a first terminal, and after running the specs in a second terminal, I don't see any output from the job worker in the first terminal.

On the other hand, the jobs are well processed if I enqueue them via "script/console test". So I'm a bit confused.

With both the specs and the script/console, the line I use to enqueue my jobs is :

Delayed::Job.enqueue GetPage::GetPageJob.new("http://cnn.com") 

Any idea ?

Answer 1

The simplest way to test queued Delayed::Job tasks in RSpec is to run them in real time. Simply add the following line to your RSpec tests:

Delayed::Worker.delay_jobs = false 

This will cause your jobs to be processed immediately upon enqueuing, not in a separate thread. This is usually what you want for testing, since it's deterministic.

Two caveats

• If you are trying to test for timing errors, race conditions, etc, this approach won't help (since the jobs are processed in the same thread as RSpec)

• The current version of delayed_job (2.1.4) has a minor bug in which the callback hooks (enqueue, before, success, error, failure) don't get called when Delayed::Worker.delay_jobs is set to false.

Two Workarounds

If you need to test the callback hooks I know of two workarounds:

• Fetch the latest master branch from github. (I haven't tried that because I need a stable version)

• Instead of setting Delayed::Worker.delay_jobs = false, explicitly call DJ's run mechanism in your test code as follows:

  successes, failures = Delayed::Worker.new.work_off

That will process whatever is in the job queue (again, in the same thread as the RSpec tests) and return two numbers: the # of jobs that succeeded and the # of jobs that failed. I currently use this approach and it does everything I need.

Answer 2

In the past, I've tried to do an end-to-end test of logic -> delayed-job -> perform job, and it was too many things. I think rather than test that full sweet using RSpec, you could focus on testing each aspect.

So, test that a job gets inserted. Then, have another test that tests what should happen when a job is executed.

Alternatively, mock out the delayed-job, so that when you enqueue a job, it executes it right away.