C# / .NET SDK¶
The official .NET SDK for SnerdMQ. Leverages C#'s async/Task ThreadPool with native ASP.NET Core compatibility.
Installation¶
Quickstart¶
using SnerdMQ;
class Program
{
static async Task Main(string[] args)
{
using var queue = new SnerdQueue();
// Register an async handler
queue.RegisterHandler("send_email", async (jsonData) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Sending email: {jsonData}");
await Task.Delay(1000);
// Throw to trigger retry
});
// Start listening on the ThreadPool
queue.StartListening();
// Enqueue a job
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "email-123",
taskType: "send_email",
jsonData: "{\"to\":\"user@example.com\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.5,
rateLimitGroup: "email_api",
maxPerMinute: 100
);
// Handle permanently failed tasks
queue.RegisterMaxRetryHandler("send_email", (data) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Failed after all retries: {data}");
});
await Task.Delay(-1);
}
}
API Reference¶
new SnerdQueue(storagePath = null)¶
Creates a new queue instance and spawns the background daemon. Implements IDisposable for clean shutdown.
queue.RegisterHandler(taskType, Func<string, Task> handler)¶
Registers an async handler for a task type.
await queue.Enqueue(...)¶
Enqueues a new background job.
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "unique-id",
taskType: "task_type",
jsonData: "{\"key\":\"value\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.5,
rateLimitGroup: "api_group",
maxPerMinute: 50,
autoDedupe: true,
urgencyScore: 0.9,
executeAt: DateTime.Parse("2026-12-31T23:59:00Z"),
cron: "0 8 * * *",
webhookUrl: "https://example.com/webhook",
maxExecutionSeconds: 300
);
queue.RegisterMaxRetryHandler(taskType, Action<string> handler)¶
Registers a handler for permanently failed tasks (Dead Letter Queue).
queue.StartDashboard(port)¶
Starts the built-in React dashboard over the embedded HttpListener.
queue.YieldProgress(message)¶
Streams a progress update from within a handler.
Hard Timeouts¶
The .NET SDK uses Task.WhenAny with Task.Delay for local timeout enforcement. The background Rust daemon also enforces timeouts at the IPC level.
Dashboard¶
Queue Topology¶
Recommended: one queue, all job types (singleton). Each SDK client spawns its own Rust daemon and exclusively owns its storage directory (.snerdata by default). Register every job type on one client and serve a single shared dashboard:
using var queue = new SnerdQueue();
// Two job types sharing the same queue, daemon, and dashboard
queue.RegisterHandler("process_image", (jsonData) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Processing image: {jsonData}");
});
queue.RegisterHandler("send_otp_email", (jsonData) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Sending OTP: {jsonData}");
});
queue.StartDashboard(8080); // one dashboard shows every job type
All job types share the same job log, retry/DLQ pipeline, rate-limit state, and stats.
One queue per storage directory
The daemon takes an exclusive OS-level lock on its storage directory at startup. A second client on the same storage fails fast ("Another daemon is already running on storage ...") instead of double-executing jobs. This also applies across processes — multi-worker deployments need one storage directory per worker.
Need isolation between workloads? Give each queue its own storage directory — they become fully independent engines (own job log, rate limits, dashboard on its own port):
using var images = new SnerdQueue(null, ".snerdata-images");
using var emails = new SnerdQueue(null, ".snerdata-emails");
images.StartDashboard(8080);
emails.StartDashboard(8081);
Distributed Scaling¶
Scaling horizontally means one queue per server, each with its own storage — the load balancer routes requests, and every server processes the jobs it enqueued:
// Each server runs its own daemon on its own storage dir (local disk works fine)
using var queue = new SnerdQueue(null, "/var/data/snerd");
A shared network drive (AWS EFS or NFS) is still a good home for that storage when a single instance needs durable state across container restarts.
Advanced Orchestration (v0.3.0 Features)¶
SnerdMQ v0.3.0 introduced powerful new primitives for managing complex background jobs. Below are realistic, production-like scenarios showing how to utilize these features in Dotnet:
// 1. Sharded Queues
// Context: A developer needs to scale their deployment across 4 servers to handle massive load, but they don't want to use Redis.
// How to use: Tell the daemon how many shards to claim on boot. The queue handles the OS-level locking automatically.
using var queue = new SnerdQueue(maxLocalShards: 4);
// 2. Worker Pools
// Context: A system has both slow AI generation tasks and fast transactional emails. We want to prevent AI tasks from starving the email workers.
// Enqueue an AI task to a dedicated pool
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "ai-gen-123",
taskType: "ai_generation",
jsonData: "{\"prompt\":\"A majestic horse\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
pool: "ai-pool"
);
// Enqueue an email task to a fast, urgent pool
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "email-123",
taskType: "send_email",
jsonData: "{\"to\":\"user@example.com\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
pool: "urgent"
);
// 3. Job Chaining (DAGs)
// Context: A video processing pipeline where a video must be transcoded, then uploaded to S3, and finally an email notification must be sent.
// Step 1: Transcode
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "transcode-1",
taskType: "transcode_video",
jsonData: "{\"file\":\"raw.mp4\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null
);
// Step 2: Upload (Waits for Step 1)
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "upload-1",
taskType: "upload_s3",
jsonData: "{\"file\":\"processed.mp4\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
triggerAfterIds: new List<string> { "transcode-1" }
);
// Step 3: Notify (Waits for Step 2)
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "notify-1",
taskType: "send_email",
jsonData: "{\"status\":\"done\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
triggerAfterIds: new List<string> { "upload-1" }
);
// 4. Cron & Scheduled Jobs
// Context: A system needs to run a database cleanup script every night at midnight.
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "daily-digest",
taskType: "send_email",
jsonData: "{\"template\":\"daily\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
cron: "0 8 * * *"
);
// 5. Hard Timeouts
// Context: A background worker is making an HTTP request to a flaky third-party API that might hang indefinitely. We forcefully kill it if it runs over 5 minutes.
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "api-fetch-1",
taskType: "fetch_data",
jsonData: "{\"endpoint\":\"/sync\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
maxExecutionSeconds: 300
);
// 6. Webhook Callbacks
// Context: A developer is using AWS Lambda or Vercel Serverless functions and wants SnerdMQ to trigger the function via an HTTP POST request rather than running a local worker.
await queue.Enqueue(
taskId: "serverless-job",
taskType: "resize_image",
jsonData: "{\"img\":\"cat.jpg\"}",
maxRetries: 3,
retryAfterHours: 0.0,
rateLimitGroup: null,
maxPerMinute: null,
autoDedupe: null,
urgencyScore: null,
webhookUrl: "https://api.example.com/webhook/snerdmq"
);
// 7. The Dead Letter Queue (DLQ)
// Context: A task has failed its maximum number of retries (e.g., the SendGrid API is down for hours). The developer needs to catch this to alert the team on Slack.
queue.RegisterMaxRetryHandler("send_email", async (data) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Task permanently failed! Alerting Slack with data: {data}");
});
Architecture Best Practices¶
When building production applications with SnerdMQ, it is recommended to initialize the queue as a Singleton, isolate your domain workers into separate files/functions, use Dead Letter Queues (DLQ) for failed tasks via RegisterMaxRetryHandler, and ensure manual graceful shutdown. The embedded Dashboard UI can also be easily served from the same instance.
using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using SnerdMQ;
class Program
{
static async Task Main(string[] args)
{
var queue = new SnerdQueue(storagePath: "./.snerdata");
// Email Workers
queue.RegisterHandler("send_email", async (data) =>
{
var email = (string)data["email"];
Console.WriteLine($"Sending email to {email}...");
});
queue.RegisterMaxRetryHandler("send_email", async (data) =>
{
var email = (string)data["email"];
Console.WriteLine($"Email to {email} failed permanently. Dead letter processing...");
});
// Image Workers
queue.RegisterHandler("process_image", async (data) =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Processing image {(string)data["imageId"]}...");
});
queue.StartDashboard(8080);
// Graceful shutdown
Console.CancelKeyPress += (s, e) =>
{
e.Cancel = true;
queue.Shutdown();
};
await queue.StartListening();
}
}