Supabase Just Got More Powerful: Queue, Cron, and Background Tasks in Edge Functions

#supabase #deno #typescript #serverless

This was my first reaction when Supabase announced their new Queue, Cron and Background Tasks in an Edge Function features.
Let me show you why this is such a big deal.

The Old World: Juggling Multiple Services

Picture this: You're building an (AI) app that needs to handle long-running processes, like AI-powered audio transcription. Until now, you had to piece together a puzzle of different services:

Queue management with Bull or Trigger.dev
A separate hosting platform for your background jobs (ex: Render, Railway)
Redis for job state management
And of course, Supabase for your main database

I experienced this while building AutoRepurpose AI - a tool that transforms YouTube videos into engaging social media content. The process involves:

Extracting video subtitles
Creating and storing embeddings in Supabase (PostgreSQL)
Generating tailored social posts using these embeddings

For these tasks, I had to set up Bull on a Node.js instance hosted on Railway, plus Redis for managing the background processes.

The New World: Supabase Queue Changes Everything

Now, everything lives under one roof. No more context switching between services. No more managing multiple platforms. Just pure, streamlined efficiency.

Here's all you need to implement background processing with Supabase:

Add items to your queue
Create an edge function to process queued items
Set up a cron job to trigger the processing

Let's see how this looks in code ✨:

Add a queue item: React component (Next.js)

const supabase = createClient<Database>(
  process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL!,
  process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY!,
  { db: { schema: "pgmq_public" } }
);

const sendToQueue = async () => {
  await supabase.rpc("send", {
    queue_name: "ai-background-job",
    message: { userId, videoId },
  });
};

return <button onClick={sendToQueue}>Create a new project</button>

ai-process edge function (Supabase Edge Functions)

import { createClient } from "https://esm.sh/@supabase/supabase-js@2.47.7";
import process from "node:process";
import type { Database } from "../supabase.ts";

const supabase = createClient<Database>(
  process.env.SUPABASE_URL!,
  process.env.SUPABASE_ANON_KEY!,
);

const supabasePgmqSchema = createClient<Database>(
  process.env.SUPABASE_URL!,
  process.env.SUPABASE_ANON_KEY!,
  { db: { schema: "pgmq_public" } },
);

Deno.serve(async (req) => {
  const queueToProcess = await supabasePgmqSchema.rpc("pop", {
    queue_name: "ai-background-job",
  });

  if (
    queueToProcess.error || !queueToProcess.data ||
    !Array.isArray(queueToProcess.data)
  ) {
    return new Response(
      JSON.stringify({ success: false }),
      { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" }, status: 500 },
    );
  }

  const { userId, videoId } = queueToProcess.data[0].message as {
    userId: string;
    videoId: string;
  };

  // Fetch the transcription of the video, generate social posts,
  // and save them in the database in the background
  EdgeRuntime.waitUntil(processAIStuff({ userId, videoId }));

  return new Response(
    JSON.stringify({ success: true }),
    { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" } },
  );
});

Set up a cron job

The new cron interface is quite straightforward. Just a few clicks in the dashboard, and you're done:

The Complete Backend Package

Supabase now offers everything you need in one platform:

Queuing system
Simple, powerful cron jobs
Edge Functions with serverless computing and background task capabilities
authentication
PostgreSQL database with superpowers

They didn't just add a missing piece - they completed the backend puzzle. As developers, we can now focus on building features instead of managing infrastructure.

Supabase truly has become the backend that eats backends! ⚡️