Sending queue emails in Laravel

Laravel is a popular PHP web application framework that includes many features for building robust and scalable applications. One of these features is the Mail Queue, which allows you to send emails asynchronously, improving the performance of your application.

In this blog, we will discuss how to implement the Mail Queue in Laravel and the benefits it provides.

What is the Mail Queue?

When you send an email using Laravel’s built-in Mail system, the email is sent immediately, which can cause performance issues if you have to send many emails at once. The Mail Queue allows you to send emails asynchronously in the background, meaning that you can queue up a large number of emails to be sent, and then process them in the background, without affecting the performance of your application.

The Mail Queue is implemented using Laravel’s Queue system, which is a robust and scalable system for running background jobs in Laravel applications.

Implementing the Mail Queue in Laravel

To implement the Mail Queue in Laravel, you need to follow a few steps:

1. Configuring the Queue

The first step is to configure the Queue system in Laravel. You can do this by editing the config/queue.php file in your Laravel application. In this file, you can configure the Queue system to use a driver, such as database, redis, beanstalkd, or sqs. For example, to use the database driver, you would set the following configuration:

'connections' => [
    'database' => [
        'driver' => 'database',
        'table' => 'jobs',
        'queue' => 'default',
        'retry_after' => 90,
    ],
],

2. Creating the Email

Next, you need to create the email that you want to send. You can create an email using Laravel’s Mail system, just like you would for any other email. For example, here’s how you might create a welcome email:

namespace App\Mail;

use Illuminate\Bus\Queueable;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Mail\Mailable;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;

class WelcomeEmail extends Mailable implements ShouldQueue
{
    use Queueable, SerializesModels;

    public $user;

    public function __construct($user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
    }

    public function build()
    {
        return $this->view('emails.welcome')->with([
            'name' => $this->user->name,
        ]);
    }
}

Notice that this email implements the ShouldQueue interface, which indicates that this email should be added to the Mail Queue.

3. Queuing the Email

Once you’ve created the email, you can queue it using Laravel’s Queue system. To do this, you can use the queue method on the Mail facade, like this:

Mail::to($user->email)->queue(new WelcomeEmail($user));

This will add the email to the Mail Queue, which will be processed in the background.

4. Processing the Queue

Finally, you need to process the Mail Queue. To do this, you can use the queue:work Artisan command, like this:

php artisan queue:work

This command will start processing the Mail Queue in the background, sending out emails as needed.

Conclusion

The Mail Queue is a powerful feature in Laravel that allows you to send emails asynchronously in the background, improving the performance of your application. By following the steps outlined in this blog, you can easily implement the Mail Queue in your Laravel application, and start sending emails with ease.