From: leon breedt <bitserf@...>
Date: 2005-04-14T07:45:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Threads in Rails

On 4/13/05, Tony Targonski <Tony.Targonski@quest.com> wrote:
> In my Rails application, I have a function perform some background
> calculations inside of a thread.
> 
> The problem is that the said thread gets no computation time unless
> something else runs in parallel. If the user continuously refreshes a
> page (any controller page), the function zooms through the tasks. But if
> one was to just initiate the script and leave for a coffee break --
> nothing gets done.
> 
> Threads are attention whores, how do I fix or work around that?
I had a need for something similar (a long-running operation calling
out to blocking OS calls). My solution was to move that out into a
seperate process and use DRb to communicate the request and query for
the result. At least that way, if the FastCGI dispatcher goes down for
some reason, the operation is still guaranteed to complete
deterministically.

Supporting this kind of thing in Rails proper would start moving it
towards Application Server territory :)

Leon