Laravel Queue Job Example – Complete Beginner’s Guide

Improving performance is one of the most important parts of building modern Laravel applications. When your project needs to send emails, generate reports, upload files, or process heavy tasks, you don’t want users to wait for everything to finish. That’s when queues come in.

In this guide, you will learn everything about how queues work with a simple and practical Laravel queue job example that you can use for your real projects. This tutorial is beginner-friendly and walks you through every step clearly.

Why Use Queues in Your Project?

Queues are designed to make your application faster, smoother, and more responsive. Instead of forcing users to wait while your system handles heavy tasks, queues push that work into the background so your app can continue running instantly.

They are extremely useful for handling tasks such as:

• Sending emails
• Processing images or large files
• Generating PDF reports
• Importing or exporting big datasets
• Sending real-time notifications
• Calling slow or external APIs
• Printing ordered items to a kitchen printer immediately after a customer places an order

Throughout this tutorial, you’ll see a practical Laravel queue job example that shows exactly how queues help improve performance and keep your application scalable as it grows.

Step 1: Create a New Laravel Project

Open your terminal and create a new Laravel project:

You’ll first run:

composer global require laravel/installer

(You only need to run this once globally).

Then you can run this command to get the interactive experience and create your project.

laravel new laravel-project-name

Go to the project folder:

cd laravel-project-name

Run the migration command

php artisan migrate

Then start the Laravel development server:

php artisan serve

After that, open another terminal and run these commands:

npm install

npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:8000 — you should see the Laravel welcome page.

Step 2: Set Up the Queue Driver

Before you run your first job, you need to set up the storage system where queued jobs will be kept. This is known as a “queue driver.”

For beginners, the database driver is the easiest option because it works everywhere—no extra installation needed.

1. Change the queue driver in .env

Open your .env file and change this to:

QUEUE_CONNECTION=database

This tells Laravel not to run jobs immediately but instead store them in the database.

2. Create the jobs table

Laravel needs a table to hold queued jobs.

Run:

php artisan queue:table

Then run the migration:

php artisan migrate

Now your database has a new table named jobs where tasks will be stored.

Your queue system is ready!

Since the Laravel 12 queue system defaults to the database driver, you can skip configuration for this step.

Step 3: Create Your First Laravel Job

Now let’s create a job using the built-in Artisan command.

Run:

php artisan make:job SendWelcomeEmail

This creates a file in:

app/Jobs/SendWelcomeEmail.php

Inside this job, you will place any heavy logic you want to run in the background.
For our Laravel queue job example, imagine sending a welcome email to a new user.

Modify the handle() method:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;

public function handle(): void
{
    Log::info('Welcome email sent in the background!');
}

This lets us test the queue system without needing to send a real email.

Step 4: Dispatch the Queue Job

Next, you need a place to trigger (dispatch) the asynchronous job. A simple way to test this is by defining a route that executes the job’s dispatch method.

You will add the following code to your application’s route file, typically located at routes/web.php. Make sure to import your Job class at the top of the file.

use App\Jobs\SendWelcomeEmail;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('/test-queue-email', function () {
    dispatch(new SendWelcomeEmail());
    return "User registered! Email will be sent in the background.";
});

When this method runs, your job is added to the queue and will be processed by a worker.

This completes your core Laravel queue job example.

Step 5: Run the Laravel Queue Worker

The queue worker listens for jobs and processes them one by one.

Start it with:

php artisan queue:work

You should now see something like:

[processing] SendWelcomeEmail

Every time you trigger the controller, the queued job will run in the background.

Final Step: Running and Testing Your Project

To test your project, run the Laravel server:

php artisan serve

If your project also uses Vue.js, run the frontend in a separate terminal:

npm run dev

After both are running, open your browser and visit:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/test-queue-email

Make sure all pages load and your features work as expected.

Visit the link we have setup in route

Laravel will add the job to your jobs table

The queue worker will automatically pick it up

You’ll see a message in storage/logs/laravel.log

This proves your queue system is working correctly.

Handling Failed Jobs

Sometimes jobs fail due to email errors, API delays, or network issues. Laravel provides a built-in system to track failed jobs.

Enable failed job logging:

php artisan queue:failed-table
php artisan migrate

View failed jobs:

php artisan queue:failed

Retry them:

php artisan queue:retry all

This ensures your Laravel queue job example is reliable even in real production environments.

Conclusion

Queues are one of the most powerful features in Laravel. With this beginner-friendly Laravel queue job example, you’ve learned how to set up the queue driver, create a job, dispatch it, run the queue worker, and handle failed jobs.

Now you can confidently move heavy tasks to the background and make your Laravel application faster and more efficient.

If you want to explore more about Laravel Tutorial, you can check it out here.