Queueing jobs in Postgres from Node.js like a boss.


``js
async function readme() {
const { PgBoss } = require('pg-boss');
const boss = new PgBoss('postgres://user:pass@host/database');

boss.on('error', console.error)

await boss.start()

const queue = 'readme-queue'

await boss.createQueue(queue)

const id = await boss.send(queue, { arg1: 'read me' })

console.log(created job ${id} in queue ${queue})

await boss.work(queue, async ([ job ]) => {
console.log(received job ${job.id} with data ${JSON.stringify(job.data)})
})
}

readme()
.catch(err => {
console.log(err)
process.exit(1)
})
`

pg-boss is a job queue built in Node.js on top of PostgreSQL in order to provide background processing and reliable asynchronous execution to Node.js applications.

pg-boss relies on Postgres's SKIP LOCKED, a feature built specifically for message queues to resolve record locking challenges inherent with relational databases. This provides exactly-once delivery and the safety of guaranteed atomic commits to asynchronous job processing.

This will likely cater the most to teams already familiar with the simplicity of relational database semantics and operations (SQL, querying, and backups). It will be especially useful to those already relying on PostgreSQL that want to limit how many systems are required to monitor and support in their architecture.




Summary

* Exactly-once job delivery
* Create jobs within your existing database transaction
* Backpressure-compatible polling workers
* Cron scheduling
* Queue storage policies to support a variety of rate limiting, debouncing, and concurrency use cases
* Priority queues, dead letter queues, job deferral, automatic retries with exponential backoff
* Pub/sub API for fan-out queue relationships
* SQL support for non-Node.js runtimes for most operations
* Serverless function compatible
* Multi-master compatible (for example, in a Kubernetes ReplicaSet)

CLI

pg-boss includes a command-line interface for managing database migrations without writing code. This is useful for CI/CD pipelines, database setup scripts, or manual schema management.

$3

When installed globally, the CLI is available as pg-boss:

`bash
npm install -g pg-boss
pg-boss --help
`

Or run directly with npx:

`bash
npx pg-boss --help
`

$3

| Command | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| migrate | Run pending migrations (creates schema if not exists) |
| create | Create initial pg-boss schema |
| version | Show current schema version |
| rollback | Rollback the last migration |
| plans | Output SQL without executing (subcommands: create, migrate, rollback) |

$3

The CLI supports multiple ways to configure the database connection, in order of precedence:

1. Command-line arguments
`bash
pg-boss migrate --connection-string postgres://user:pass@host/database
# or individual options
pg-boss migrate --host localhost --port 5432 --database mydb --user postgres --password secret
`

2. Environment variables
`bash
PGBOSS_DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@host/database pg-boss migrate
# or individual variables
PGBOSS_HOST=localhost PGBOSS_PORT=5432 PGBOSS_DATABASE=mydb PGBOSS_USER=postgres PGBOSS_PASSWORD=secret pg-boss migrate
`

This allows admin credentials for migrations to coexist with regular application database credentials (e.g., DATABASE_URL for the app, PGBOSS_DATABASE_URL for migrations).

3. Config file (pgboss.json or .pgbossrc in current directory, or specify with --config)
`bash
pg-boss migrate --config ./config/pgboss.json
`

Config file format:
`json
{
"host": "localhost",
"port": 5432,
"database": "mydb",
"user": "postgres",
"password": "secret",
"schema": "pgboss"
}
`

$3

| Option | Short | Description |
|--------|-------|-------------|
| --connection-string | -c | PostgreSQL connection string |
| --host | | Database host |
| --port | | Database port |
| --database | -d | Database name |
| --user | -u | Database user |
| --password | -p | Database password |
| --schema | -s | pg-boss schema name (default: pgboss) |
| --config | | Path to config file |
| --dry-run | | Show SQL without executing (for migrate, create, rollback) |

$3

`bash


Create schema in a new database

pg-boss create --connection-string postgres://localhost/myapp

Run migrations in CI/CD pipeline

PGBOSS_DATABASE_URL=$PGBOSS_DATABASE_URL pg-boss migrate

Preview migration SQL before running

pg-boss migrate --connection-string postgres://localhost/myapp --dry-run

Check current schema version

pg-boss version -c postgres://localhost/myapp

Use a custom schema name

pg-boss migrate -c postgres://localhost/myapp --schema myapp_jobs

Output SQL for creating schema (useful for review or manual execution)

pg-boss plans create --schema myapp_jobs
`

Requirements

* Node 22.12 or higher for CommonJS's require(esm)
* PostgreSQL 13 or higher

Documentation

* Docs

Contributing

To setup a development environment for this library:

`bash
git clone https://github.com/timgit/pg-boss.git
npm install
`

To run the test suite, linter and code coverage:
`bash
npm run cover
`

The test suite will try and create a new database named pgboss. The config.json file has the default credentials to connect to postgres.

The Docker Compose file can be used to start a local postgres instance for testing:

`bash
docker compose up
``