Retrying ActiveJob

I like ActiveJob. One missing feature is the ability to retry when a job fails. Fortunately, this is quite easy to add:

module ActiveJobRetriesCount
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    attr_accessor :retries_count
  end

  def initialize(*arguments)
    super
    @retries_count ||= 0
  end

  def deserialize(job_data)
    super
    @retries_count = job_data['retries_count'] || 0
  end

  def serialize
    super.merge('retries_count' => retries_count || 0)
  end

  def retry_job(options)
    @retries_count = (retries_count || 0) + 1
    super(options)
  end
end

class ImageDownloader::Worker < ActiveJob::Base
  include ActiveJobRetriesCount

  rescue_from ImageDownloader::TimeoutError do |exception|
    if exception.code == 0
      # just retry the download in 5 minutes
      # tolarate up to 5 failures
      retry_job wait: 5.minutes if retries_count > 5
    else
      fail exception
    end
  end

  def perform(url)
    ImageDownloader.download(url)
  end
end

Here is a simple test for the ActiveJobRetriesCount.

require 'spec_helper'

describe ActiveJobRetriesCount do
  class RetriesTestClass
  end

  class RetriesTestError < StandardError
  end

  class RetriesTestWorker < ActiveJob::Base
    include ActiveJobRetriesCount

    rescue_from RetriesTestError do
      retry_job wait: 5.minutes if retries_count < 5
    end

    def perform
      RetriesTestClass.do_something(retries_count)
    end
  end

  it 'handles retries counts', active_job: :inline do
    allow(RetriesTestClass).to receive(:do_something).and_raise RetriesTestError

    expect { RetriesTestWorker.perform_later }.not_to raise_error

    expect(RetriesTestClass).to have_received(:do_something).with(5)
    expect(RetriesTestClass).not_to have_received(:do_something).with(6)
  end
end

If you are not on Rails 5, you would need the following code:

if ActiveJob::Base.method_defined?(:deserialize)
  fail 'This no longer needed.'
else
  module ActiveJob
    class Base
      def self.deserialize(job_data)
        job = job_data['job_class'].constantize.new
        job.deserialize(job_data)
        job
      end

      def deserialize(job_data)
        self.job_id               = job_data['job_id']
        self.queue_name           = job_data['queue_name']
        self.serialized_arguments = job_data['arguments']
      end
    end
  end
end

For more advanced features – check out ActiveJob::Retry.