Testing Sidekiq's retry queue

Question

We have a fairly mission-critical component that clears out the Sidekiq retry queue for a certain item if certain criteria are met. Sidekiq's testing API provided no way to add to the retry queue, so I we had to come up with something custom.

Answer 1

To add to the retry queue:

  def add_retry(object: @object, klass: 'HardWorker', at: Time.now.to_f)
    payload = Sidekiq.dump_json(
      class: klass,
      args: [object.id, object.class, 'sidekiq_retry_test'],
      queue: 'user_integration',
      jid: rand(1..10000),
      retry_count: 20,
      failed_at: Time.now.to_f
    )

    Sidekiq.redis do |conn|
      conn.zadd('retry', at.to_s, payload)
    end
  end

You can change anything inside the payload hash. You might want to specify the queue, or add a more robust solution to pick a job id. This is just what worked for us.

You will need to clean up the retry queue after the fact. You should do this within a teardown or after(:all) block.

  def cleanup_retry_queue
    Sidekiq::RetrySet.new.each do |job|
      job.delete if job.args[2] == 'sidekiq_retry_test'
    end
  end

Remember, this will actually add to the queue, so be careful. Only use this if you have a testable component that relies on retry queues. Don't use this to test Sidekiq's queuing functionality itself.