How do I get a js file to run in Next.js backend?

Question

I have a few lines of code in a file that I use to instantiate a worker for bullmq. It works independently from the rest of the server so Next.js never runs it since it's not imported anywhere.

e.g. I have the following in a standalone file that I want the server to run.

const emailWorker = new Worker("emailSchedule", emailWorkerJob, {
  connection: redisConfiguration
});

I ended up exporting emailWorker and importing it into some file that gets called by an API to force the code run. Is there another solution?

Answer 1

I was able to fix this by setting autorun: false in the worker, then exporting to one of the file that gets loaded and calling emailWorker.run()

emailWorker.js

const emailWorker = new Worker("emailSchedule", emailWorkerJob, {
  connection: <<redis connection>>,
  autorun: false
});

export default emailWorker;

bullmq.js

import emailWorker from "./workers/emailWorker"
...
emailWorker.run()