Message Queue

Overview

Shopware uses the Symfony Messenger component and Enqueue to handle asynchronous messages. This allows tasks to be processed in the background. Thus, tasks can be processed independently of timeouts or system crashes. By default, tasks in Shopware are stored in the database and processed via the browser as long as you are logged into the Administration. This is a simple and fast method for the development process, but not recommended for production systems. With multiple users logged into the Administration, this can lead to a high CPU load and interfere with the smooth execution of PHP FPM.

Message queue on production systems

On a production system, the message queue should be processed via the CLI instead of the browser in the Administration (Admin worker). This way, tasks are also completed when no one is logged into the Administration and high CPU load due to multiple users in the admin is also avoided. Furthermore, you can change the transport to another system like RabbitMQ. This would, relieve the database and, on the other hand, use a much more specialized service for handling message queues. The following are examples of the steps needed.
It is recommended to run one or more messenger:consumeworkers. To automatically start the processes again after they stopped because of exceeding the given limits you can use a process control system like systemd or supervisor. Alternatively, you can configure a cron job that runs the command periodically.

INFO

Using cron jobs won't take care of maximum running worker, like supervisor can do. They don't wait for another worker to stop. So there is a risk of starting an unwanted amount of workers when you have messages running longer than the set time limit. If the time limit has been exceeded worker will wait for the current message to be finished.

Find here the docs of Symfony: https://symfony.com/doc/current/messenger.html#deploying-to-production

INFO

It is recommended to use a third-party message queue to support multiple consumers and/or a greater amount of data to index.

Consuming Messages

The recommended method for consuming messages is using the CLI worker.

Cli worker

You can configure the command just to run a certain amount of time and to stop if it exceeds a certain memory limit like:

bin/console messenger:consume default --time-limit=60 --memory-limit=128M

For more information about the command and its configuration, use the -h option:

bin/console messenger:consume -h

Admin worker

If you have configured the cli-worker, you should turn off the admin worker in the Shopware configuration file. Therefore, create or edit the configuration shopware.yaml.

# config/packages/shopware.yaml
shopware:
    admin_worker:
        enable_admin_worker: false

The admin worker, if used, can be configured in the general shopware.yml configuration. If you want to use the admin worker, you have to specify each transport that was previously configured. The poll interval is the time in seconds that the admin worker polls messages from the queue. After the poll interval is over, the request terminates, and the Administration initiates a new request.

# config/packages/shopware.yaml
shopware:
    admin_worker:
        enable_admin_worker: true
        poll_interval: 30
        transports: ["default"]

systemd example

We assume the services to be called shopware_consumer.

Create a new file /etc/systemd/system/shopware_consumer@.service

[Unit]
Description=Shopware Message Queue Consumer, instance %i
PartOf=shopware_consumer.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=www-data # Change this to webserver's user name
Restart=always
# Change the path to your shop path
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/html
ExecStart=php /var/www/html/bin/console messenger:consume --time-limit=60 --memory-limit=512M

[Install]
WantedBy=shopware_consumer.target

Create a new file /etc/systemd/system/shopware_consumer.target

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Unit]
Description=shopware_consumer service

Enable multiple instances. Example for three instances: systemctl enable shopware_consumer@{1..3}.service

Enable the dummy target: systemctl enable shopware_consumer.target

At the end start the services: systemctl start shopware_consumer.target

supervisord example

Please refer to the Symfony documentation for the setup.

Sending mails over the message queue

By default, Shopware sends the mails synchronously. Since this can affect the page speed, you can switch it to use the Message Queue with a small configuration change.

# config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
    mailer:
        message_bus: 'messenger.default_bus'

Transport: RabbitMQ example

In this example, we replace the standard transport, which stores the messages in the database, with RabbitMQ. Of course, other transport can be used as well. Detailed documentation of the parameters and possibilities can be found in the Symfony documentation. In the following, I assume that RabbitMQ is installed and started. Furthermore, a queue, here called messages, should be created inside RabbitMQ. The only thing left is to tell Shopware about the new transport. Therefore we edit/create the configuration file framework.yaml with the following content:

# config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
    messenger:
        transports:
            default:
                dsn: "amqp://localhost:5672/%2f/messages"

INFO

The system needs the AMQP php extension

Transport: Redis example

In the following, I assume that Redis is installed and started. To use the Symfony Messenger Redis Transport configure as below:

# config/packages/framework.yaml
parameters:
  env(MESSENGER_CONSUMER_NAME): 'consumer'

framework:
  messenger:
    transports:
      default:
        dsn: "redis://redis:port/messages/symfony/%env(MESSENGER_CONSUMER_NAME)%?delete_after_ack=true&delete_after_reject=true&dbindex=0"

INFO

As Shopware handles failed messages on its own. We can enable the deletion of failed or acknowledged messages. When running more than one consumer, MESSENGER_CONSUMER_NAME needs to be set. For example, in supervisor with environment=MESSENGER_CONSUMER_NAME=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d.