With most web applications, there comes a time where there is a need to perform either CPU or I/O intensive work based on user actions. Whether processing uploaded files, or performing system-wide database updates, developers are increasingly turning to Gearman as a simple way to hand off the heavy lifting to another server to be performed asynchronously. It is easy to install and configure and has interfaces to many popular languages, including PHP.
With this in mind, the team at Ibuildings created a module to allow easy usage of Gearman from within the open source ecommerce solution Magento. Releasing this module provides a simple way to perform job queue operations within the popular open-source ecommerce platform. The module is open source and freely available for download at https://github.com/ibuildings/Magento-Gearman-Module/tree/Version_1_0_0. This tutorial walks through installation of the module and some examples using it; it is assumed that you are already familiar with Magento development to begin this tutorial.
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