Add an App Engine task to a Cloud Tasks queue

Add an App Engine application

When you target an App Engine task, and before you can deploy an app to the App Engine standard environment, you must add an App Engine application to your project.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the App Engine page.

   Go to App Engine

2. In the Welcome to App Engine dialog, do one of the following:

   • If you have already created an App Engine application and there is a Your App Engine application has been created message displayed, you can then skip the remaining steps in this section and proceed with the steps in the Install and deploy the sample section.

     or

   • If you haven't created an App Engine application yet, then click Create application and continue with the remaining steps in this section.

3. Select a region for your application and make a note of it.

   Note that europe-west and us-central are called, respectively, europe-west1 and us-central1 in Cloud Tasks commands.

4. Don't select a service account; the default App Engine service account is used.

5. Click Next.

   The application is configured and created. This can take a couple of minutes.

6. Don't download the Cloud SDK; instead, click I'll do this later.

   You should see a Your App Engine application has been created message.

Install and deploy the sample

The Node.js sample used in this quickstart consists of two files: createTask.js is run locally as a command-line tool to create and add tasks to the Tasks queue; server.js is deployed on App Engine as a worker service to process the task.

1. In your terminal, clone the sample application repository to your local machine.

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples.git
   

2. Navigate to the directory that contains the sample code.

   cd nodejs-docs-samples/cloud-tasks/snippets
   

3. Install all dependencies using a Node.js package manager.

   You can use NPM:

   npm install
   

   Or, you can use Yarn:

   yarn install
   

4. Deploy the worker service (server.js) to the App Engine standard environment.

   gcloud app deploy app.yaml
   

5. Make sure that the app containing the service is running.

   gcloud app browse
   

6. In your browser, go to the provided link. For example:

   https://PROJECT_ID.uc.r.appspot.com/
   

   You should see Hello, World! displayed.

Create a Cloud Tasks queue

Use the gcloud tasks queues create command to create your queue in the environment you've prepared.

1. In your terminal, create a queue that logs all operations.

   gcloud tasks queues create QUEUE_NAME \
       --log-sampling-ratio=1.0 \
       --location=REGION
   

   Replace the following:

   • QUEUE_NAME: a name for your Cloud Tasks queue
   • REGION: the region you deployed your app in

2. Wait for the queue to initialize and then verify that it was created successfully.

   gcloud tasks queues describe QUEUE_NAME \
       --location=REGION
   

   The output should be similar to the following:

    name: projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION_ID/queues/QUEUE_NAME
    rateLimits:
      maxBurstSize: 100
      maxConcurrentDispatches: 1000
      maxDispatchesPerSecond: 500.0
    retryConfig:
      maxAttempts: 100
      maxBackoff: 3600s
      maxDoublings: 16
      minBackoff: 0.100s
    state: RUNNING
   

Add a task to the Cloud Tasks queue

Create a task, add it to the queue you created, and deliver that task to the worker service.

1. Set the following environment variables. The client uses this information to create the request.

   export PROJECT_ID=PROJECT_ID
   export LOCATION_ID=REGION
   export QUEUE_ID=QUEUE_NAME
   

2. Create a task with a payload of hello and add that task to your queue. The payload can be any data from the request that the worker service needs to process the task.

   node createTask.js $PROJECT_ID $QUEUE_ID $LOCATION_ID hello
   

3. Verify that the task was executed by displaying the logs of the worker service.

   gcloud app logs read
   

   The logs should look similar to the following:

   2024-06-20 15:00:00 default[20240620t143852]  "POST /log_payload HTTP/1.1" 200
   2024-06-20 15:00:00 default[20240620t143852]  App listening on port 8081
   2024-06-20 15:00:00 default[20240620t143852]  Press Ctrl C to quit.
   2024-06-20 15:00:00 default[20240620t143852]  Received task with payload: hello