Setting up Hangfire with .NET in 5 minutes

Have you ever needed to schedule background tasks in your .NET applications? Hangfire is a powerful library that allows you to easily schedule and manage tasks. In this article, I'll show you how to set up Hangfire in just 5 minutes.

Step 1: Install Hangfire

The first step is to add Hangfire to your project. You can do this via NuGet. Open the Package Manager Console and run the following command:

Install-Package Hangfire        

Step 2: Configure Hangfire in Startup.cs

With Hangfire installed, let's configure it in the 'Startup.cs' file. First, add the necessary references:

using Hangfire;
using Hangfire.MemoryStorage;        

Next, configure Hangfire in the 'ConfigureServices' method:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    // Configuring Hangfire to use in-memory storage
    services.AddHangfire(config => config.UseMemoryStorage());

    // Adding the Hangfire server
    services.AddHangfireServer();

    // Other services
    services.AddControllers();
}        

Finally, add the Hangfire middleware in the 'Configure' method:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
    if (env.IsDevelopment())
    {
        app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
    }

    app.UseRouting();

    app.UseEndpoints(endpoints =>
    {
        endpoints.MapControllers();
    });

    // Adding the Hangfire Dashboard
    app.UseHangfireDashboard();
}        

Step 3: Create and Schedule a Job

Now that Hangfire is configured, let's create and schedule a simple job. Create a new class called 'BackgroundJobService':

public class BackgroundJobService
{
    public void Execute()
    {
        // Your task code
        Console.WriteLine("Task executed successfully!");
    }
}        

To schedule this job, add the following code to Startup.cs:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
    // Previous code...

    // Scheduling a task to run every minute
    RecurringJob.AddOrUpdate<BackgroundJobService>(job => job.Execute(), Cron.Minutely);

    // Adding the Hangfire Dashboard
    app.UseHangfireDashboard();
}        

Step 4: Run the Application

With everything configured, you can now run the application. Navigate to /hangfire in your browser to access the Hangfire Dashboard and see the scheduled jobs.

Final Thoughts

Hangfire makes it easy to schedule and manage background tasks in .NET applications. With just a few lines of code, you can configure, schedule, and monitor tasks efficiently. Explore more Hangfire features such as priority queues, recurring jobs, and integration with different storage providers to make the most of this powerful tool.

Share this article if you found it helpful and comment below if you have any questions or suggestions!