Background Job Management in .NET with Hangfire

Introduction

In today's world, software is more than just user interfaces, forms, and data storage. To develop software that aims to enhance, accelerate, and improve an organization's or business's performance, user interaction alone isn't enough. There are tasks and operations with a different nature from direct user interaction, or that require heavier processing than simple CRUD operations. Examples of these include monitoring thousands of database records to perform specific operations, generating complex reports, or executing scheduled commands even when no user is interacting with the system. This article introduces the Hangfire framework for implementing Background Jobs on the .NET platform.

Types of Background Jobs

Depending on the needs, background operations can be categorized as follows:

• Fire-and-Forget Jobs: Operations that execute only once and immediately after creation.

  • Example: Sending a welcome email after a user signs up.

• Delayed Jobs: These operations are executed after a specified period has passed since their creation.

  • Example: Sending follow-up forms two hours after a user signs up.

• Recurring Jobs: Operations that run repeatedly based on a specific schedule.

  • Example: Updating the system cache every night at midnight.

• Continuation Jobs: Operations that are executed in a chain after another operation is completed.

  • Example: First, issuing an invoice and generating a PDF, then sending an email or SMS to the customer, and finally creating a management report.

Choosing the Right Framework for Background Jobs

There are several options for implementing background jobs in the .NET ecosystem, including:

• Hangfire
• Quartz.NET
• CAP (C# Advanced Producer)
• MassTransit
• Topshelf
• Worker Service or HostedService (.NET's built-in features)

Among these, Hangfire is highly popular due to its support for almost all types of background jobs and its provision of a dashboard for monitoring and managing the status and history of job executions. However, it's important to note that this framework is better suited for medium to large-scale projects. In lighter projects, using .NET's built-in features is often a more logical choice.

Hangfire Storage

To store information, status, schedules, and operation logs, Hangfire requires a storage backend.

By default, Hangfire supports the following databases and storage solutions:

• SQL Server
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• MySQL
• Azure Cosmos DB
• In-Memory (for testing and development only)

The choice of each option depends on the project's architecture and needs. Generally:

• For medium to large-scale applications: SQL Server or PostgreSQL are logical choices.
• For distributed systems and microservice architecture: Redis is a better choice.
• For testing and development: In-Memory is used (due to its volatility and the risk of data loss).
• For serverless or cloud-native projects: Azure Cosmos DB can be a suitable option.

Summary

In this article, we've become familiar with the Hangfire framework and its features for executing background jobs on the .NET platform. For deeper learning and practical implementation, studying the official Hangfire documentation is highly recommended.