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brandur merged 1 commit into from
Oct 10, 2026
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More language agnostic main README header #1492

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31 changes: 19 additions & 12 deletions docs/README.md
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
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# River [![Build Status](https://github.com/riverqueue/river/actions/workflows/ci.yaml/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://github.com/riverqueue/river/actions) [![Go Reference](https://pkg.go.dev/badge/github.com/riverqueue/river.svg)](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/riverqueue/river)

River is a robust high-performance job processing system for Go and Postgres.
River is a fast, transactional job queue backed by Postgres or SQLite. It
includes automatic retries, scheduling, unique jobs, and a web UI, with support
for Go, [JavaScript/TypeScript], [Ruby], and [Rust]. All implementations are
fully cross-compatible -- enqueue in one language and process in another.

See [homepage], [docs], and [godoc], as well as the [River UI][riverui] and [its
live demo][riveruidemo].

Being built for Postgres, River encourages the use of the same database for
application data and job queue. By enqueueing jobs transactionally along with
other database changes, whole classes of distributed systems problems are
avoided. Jobs are guaranteed to be enqueued if their transaction commits, are
removed if their transaction rolls back, and aren't visible for work _until_
commit. See [transactional enqueueing] for more background on this philosophy.
River encourages using the same database for application data and the job
queue. By enqueueing jobs transactionally along with other database changes,
whole classes of distributed systems problems are avoided. Jobs are guaranteed
to be enqueued if their transaction commits, are removed if their transaction
rolls back, and aren't visible for work _until_ commit. See
[transactional enqueueing] for more background on this philosophy.

## Job args and workers

Jobs are defined in struct pairs, with an implementation of [`JobArgs`] and one
of [`Worker`].
In Go, jobs are defined in struct pairs, with an implementation of [`JobArgs`]

@bgentry bgentry Oct 10, 2026

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I expect we’ll have to do something like a language ToC here and branch out into lang specific usage sections.

@brandur brandur Oct 10, 2026

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Yeah, we'll probably have to reevaluate this. I still like how you can get the basic Go usage right here, but this might have to change to a shorter document with just a series of links to other, more specific docs.

and one of [`Worker`].

Job args contain `json` annotations and define how jobs are serialized to and
from the database, along with a "kind", a stable string that uniquely identifies
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -178,10 +181,11 @@ See the [`InsertAndWork` example] for complete code.

## Cross language enqueueing

River supports inserting jobs in some non-Go languages which are then worked by Go implementations. This may be desirable in performance sensitive cases so that jobs can take advantage of Go's fast runtime.
Jobs inserted by any of River's language implementations can be worked by
another, so services in different languages can share a queue. See the source
links above for each implementation's client and worker APIs.

- [Inserting jobs from Python](https://riverqueue.com/docs/python).
- [Inserting jobs from Ruby](https://riverqueue.com/docs/ruby).
Jobs can also be [inserted from Python](https://riverqueue.com/docs/python).

## Development

Expand All @@ -195,8 +199,11 @@ See [developing River].
[Batch job insertion]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/batch-job-insertion
[Cancelling jobs]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/cancelling-jobs
[Error and panic handling]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/error-handling
[JavaScript/TypeScript]: https://github.com/riverqueue/river/tree/master/js
[Multiple queues]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/multiple-queues
[Periodic and cron jobs]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/periodic-jobs
[Ruby]: https://github.com/riverqueue/river/tree/master/ruby
[Rust]: https://github.com/riverqueue/river/tree/master/rust
[Scheduled jobs]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/scheduled-jobs
[Snoozing jobs]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/snoozing-jobs
[Subscriptions]: https://riverqueue.com/docs/subscriptions
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