Task Selection Strategies

Configure how tasks are picked from the queue

Task Selection Strategies

Task selection controls the order in which tasks are dequeued for processing. This is a global setting that applies to all task types.

Available Strategies

FIFO (Default)

First-In-First-Out. Tasks are processed in the order they were queued.

DAEMON_TASK_SELECTION=fifo

Best for: General workloads, fairness guarantees, predictable ordering.

LIFO

Last-In-First-Out. Most recently queued tasks are processed first.

DAEMON_TASK_SELECTION=lifo

Best for: Cache-hot data, reducing latency for recent requests, stack-like workloads.

Priority

Tasks with higher priority values are processed first. Tasks at the same priority level use FIFO ordering.

DAEMON_TASK_SELECTION=priority

Best for: Mixed workloads with urgent vs background tasks, SLA-based processing.

Configuration

Environment Variable

DAEMON_TASK_SELECTION=priority

CLI Flag

./task-daemon --task-selection priority

Docker

docker-compose.yml

services:
  taskdaemon:
    image: mshelia/taskdaemon:latest
    environment:
      - DAEMON_TASK_SELECTION=priority

Using Priority

When using the priority strategy, queue tasks with a priority value (0-100):

# High priority task (processed first)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/queue \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type": "urgent", "data": {...}, "priority": 100}'

# Normal priority (default is 50)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/queue \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type": "normal", "data": {...}}'

# Low priority task (processed last)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/queue \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type": "background", "data": {...}, "priority": 0}'

Priority range is 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest). Default priority is 50 if not specified.

Comparison

Strategy	Order	Use Case
FIFO	Oldest first	Fair processing, predictable
LIFO	Newest first	Cache locality, recent data
Priority	Highest priority first	Urgent tasks, SLAs