Built-in Background Tasks

Built-in Background Tasks

Webiny ships with a few of built-in Background Tasks. Some of them are used only internally (like clearing Cloudfront file cache), and some of them can be used publicly (Elasticsearch reindexing).

Test Task

The test task is a task which is used for testing the Background Task mechanism. Its definition is available here.

Elasticsearch Reindexing Task

The Elasticsearch/OpenSearch Reindexing is the first task we implemented via the Background Task mechanism. Basically, it is a task which scans through the DynamoDB Elasticsearch table and pushes the data into the specific Elasticsearch/OpenSearch index. Internally it is a bit more than that, but this is the basic idea. You can check the definition and the runner code for more information.

The task can be triggered either via code or via the GraphQL API.

Triggering the Task via Code

Let’s say that you have a Page Builder lifecycle event hook which triggers the task when the page is published, but only on index which contains the word page in its name.

Triggering the Task via GraphQL API

The task can be triggered via the GraphQL API, with the following mutation:

The task disables indexing on all matching indexes, and enables it when the task is finished. This is done to reduce the strain on the Elasticsearch/OpenSearch cluster as the reindexing operation is a heavy one.