On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:10 AM, Nathan Esquenazi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I am very interested in off-loading tasks from the request/response > cycle in order to speed up my application. My application is heavily > connected to using web services both external and from other servers we > host. > > My application does the following long-running tasks: > > - accesses / pushes to the twitter api's (with possible need for status > responses) > - accesses / pushes the facebook api's (with need for status responses) > - requesting data from another server we run (rails needs access data) > - pushes information to aim using ruburple > > I am just curious and grateful for any help people can give for what > would suit me best. I am familar with backgroundrb and bj along with > starling, etc. I don't know which one will suit me best based on the > tasks I need to queue. > > My main concern is how to properly request data and then show it to the > user. For instance, when the user logs into the rails application, I > need to show them certain information about them which comes from > complex analyzing of data done by another server we run. > > When a user logs in, I need to show them the current results of this > analysis. To do this, I need to perform a GET request to another server > and get the results and then show them to the user. What is the "best > practice" way to achieve this in which I can offload this task to a > background worker and then get the results and display them to the user. > > For instance, say the user logs in and then the background worker kicks > off to retrieve their current analyzed data from the server. How do I > then wait for the data to be retrieved by the worker and when it's ready > display it to the user? > > I feel like I am missing something because I don't see how the worker > can "tell" the main rails application that it now has the data and then > somehow show it when its "ready". Do I need to constantly poll the > server or how is this usually done. > > Also, I need to allow the user to make certain changes to data fields > and then I need to push those changes to twitter and facebook via a > background process. > > What solution is best suited based on what I described and could someone > please help me understand the pattern for how to do this. I will be > eternally grateful. > --
For what you are describing, I think BackgrounDRb will be best fit. Since, its the only solution ( that I know of ) provides interfacing with rails so as you can actually fetch results retrieved by a worker in rails. Bj is a worker queue to offload tasks. AFAIK, you can't really interact seamlessly from rails. I don't know much about startling. But this is coming from guy who maintains bdrb to take it with a grain of salt. _______________________________________________ Mongrel-users mailing list Mongrel-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/mongrel-users
