Thanks Sean. This makes sense. I'll see how far I can get with the anonymous user. I wonder, is there any way to hook into when the refresh happens? I know that the File based model will watch for incremental file additions and run, but can you refresh manually? Asking because, maybe I could keep a local, in-memory cache of anonyomous user prefs, which I could use until the refresh includes the new user data? If the refresh includes a user present in the in-memory cache, then I would remove it.
On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 2:37 AM, Sean Owen <[email protected]> wrote: > There's not a very clean answer to this. The original design from way back > when was definitely about reloading a fixed model periodically. So that's > always an option -- put the users in your database, or update files, or > whatever backs the model and they'll turn up at the next reload. > > The anonymous user hack works OK. No they do not stick around, so you could > use this to put them in temporarily while they are waiting to appear for > real. They won't affect other users while they're temporary. > > This is the sort of design issue I'm trying to address in my own work, you > really shouldn't have to jump through hoops for this kind of new data. > > Sean > > On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Matt Mitchell <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm thinking about ways I could add new users to the system dynamically. I >> have an app that gets lots of requests from new users, but there's an >> opportunity to get prefs before showing the items. So I can see where the >> anonymous user class would work here, but then what about subsequent >> requests? Can I insert a new user? >> >> Also, while these requests are happening, they're all getting recorded by >> an external app. My plan has been to update the recommender with that data >> On a nightly basis, but how would this workout with users that were added >> on the fly, since their data will already be in the recommender? Whew, hope >> this makes sense. >> >> - Matt
