node-redis-queue

This is a very simple queing wrapper for Redis that is intended for communication between separate processes.

The sending process pushes data onto the queue using the push function. The receiving process monitors for data appearing in the queue using the monitor function. The receiving process listens for a 'message' event, which delivers the data to a callback function.

Additional functions include clear to clear the queue and stopMonitoring to indicate that no further monitoring is desired.

##Running grunt for development tasks

grunt runs coffeelint and then coffee.

grunt coffeelint runs coffeelint on all the .coffee source code in the src directory.

grunt coffee runs coffee on all the .coffee source code in the src directory, converting it to .js code in the corresponding lib directory.

grunt jshint runs jshint on all the .js code except one in the demo/lib/helpers directory. Note that jshint has about ten complaints about the index.js code. The other generated code is clean.

grunt test runs the suite of tests using jasmine-node. It looks for xxxSpec.js files in the lib directory.

grunt bump bumps the patch number up in the package.json file.

grunt git-tag commits the latest staged code changes and tags the code with the version obtained from the package.json file.

grunt release runs coffee on all the .coffee source code in the src directory, converting it to .js code, and then runs the git-tag task to commit the latest staged code changes and tag the code with the version obtained from the package.json file.

##Running the Jasmine tests using npm

npm test runs the suite of tests using jasmine-node.

##Running the demo 01 code

1. Open two Git Bash console windows.
2. In one of the console windows, run redis-server & to start the Redis server in the background.
3. Run node lib/work01.js in the first console window. It will wait for some data to appear in the queue.
4. In the second console window, run node lib/provider01.js, which will place two items in the queue. Shortly thereafter, the worker01 process will pick up the two items and display them.
5. Repeat step 4.
6. In the second console window, run node lib/provider01.js stop, which will put a stop command in the queue. Shortly thereafter, the worker01 process will stop.

Note that, when running worker01, one optionally may use a 'mem' parameter to monitor memory usage. For example:

node worker01.js mem | grep '>>>' | tee memusage.out

##Running the demo 02 code

Not available yet.

##Note:

This work is derived from node-simple-redis-queue v0.9.3 by James Smith and retains the same license. I chose not to fork the project directly since I want to be free to make major changes and to have control over future changes since this code will be published in other media.

Changes from the original code include:

1. Different error handling.
2. Transparent use of JSON.stringify and JSON.parse to ensure that what you get out of the queue is the same as what you put in.
3. Addition of an optional timeout parameter to the constructor.
4. Emitting of connection 'end' events.
5. Emitting of connection 'error' events.
6. Emitting of Redis wait 'timeout' events.
7. Addition of tests using jasmine-node.
8. Addition of demo code in the demo directory.
9. Changes to the Gruntfile to use coffeelint and jshinti and to run the test suite.