# How to show progress **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 1, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501 "2006-01-01T22:07:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/1 "2006-01-01T22:07:16Z")
I’m looking for ideas on how you would implement a controller/view in Rails that needs to show the progress of a possibly 2-3 minute operation. For example the user wants to generate 100 reports that will take about 3 minutes. I would like to have a page that would indicate that the operation is taking place as well as showing progress as to how far along. With basic CGI you could render a line of text after each report was generated and as the page loaded over a few minutes all the operations would be completed. The user could cancel the operation by just stopping the page from being loaded (I think). This feels a bit hacky and I’m looking for a better design but I’m not too sure of one. The best I’ve come up with is the job is inserted into a database table and a seperate cron job ticks every minute looking for jobs in that table that actually runs the job. After the job is submitted the user is redirected to a job status page which reads the status from the database. For long operations this makes sense but for 3 minute operations the user is forced to wait ~30 seconds just for the cron job to tick, not to mention the site gets pinged every minute even when jobs might only exist every few days. How would you design this system? Jobs will take 30 - 300 seconds and be run a few times every hour. User feedback on progress is important. ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/2 "2006-01-02T00:39:09Z")
On Jan 1, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Gerry Shaw wrote: > was generated and as the page loaded over a few minutes all the > operations the user is forced to wait ~30 seconds just for the cron > job > to tick, not to mention the site gets pinged every minute even when > jobs > might only exist every few days. > > How would you design this system? Jobs will take 30 - 300 seconds and > be run a few times every hour. User feedback on progress is > important. > > – ``` For something like this you might be better off looking at a drb ``` solution. You could have a simple drb server running that would process the jobs when your user clicks go. This way you divorce the long running task from the request-response cycle where it could time out or have other problems. Then you have your drb server publish a variable with the status of the long running job. And your user would have see a web page with a process indicator that gets the status from the drb server through an ajax request to your rails app. Once your ajax requests return the finished flag from the drb server you can redirect the user to a new page with the results. ``` You can have your web page do a periodically_call_remote to get the ``` status every 5 or 10 seconds so the user sees the progress. Here are a few drb tutorial links: [http://segment7.net/projects/ruby/drb/introduction.html](http://segment7.net/projects/ruby/drb/introduction.html) [http://ian.blenke.com/drb](http://ian.blenke.com/drb) [http://www.chadfowler.com/ruby/drb.html](http://www.chadfowler.com/ruby/drb.html) ``` Hope that helps ``` -Ezra Z. WebMaster Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid 509-577-7732 ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/3 "2006-01-03T16:42:48Z")
Gerry Shaw wrote: > I’m looking for ideas on how you would implement a controller/view in > Rails that needs to show the progress of a possibly 2-3 minute > operation. Gerry- Have you found a solution to this? I’m looking for the same thing. I considered tearing apart the “upload\_progress” thing but it seems that only works on certain server versions. I was wondering if there is maybe a simpler method available for folks like us that don’t need to send status in the middle of an operation. What I would like is something like: def do\_operation render\_progress(‘Working on step 1…’) … do step 1 … render\_progress(‘Working on step 2…’) … do step 2 … render\_progress(‘Working on step 3…’) … do step 3 … render\_progress(‘Complete!’) end Jake ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/4 "2006-01-04T20:41:18Z")
On a related note for this – I am getting the “Application Error: Rails could not start” when I start an operation that takes a little while (\>30sec). It seems that with the response timing out, the server spits out an error. The operation -does- complete, however. So it would certainly be useful to be able to provide feedback to the user as the operation is going. Any ideas? Jake Jake J. wrote: > Gerry Shaw wrote: > > > I’m looking for ideas on how you would implement a controller/view in > > Rails that needs to show the progress of a possibly 2-3 minute > > operation. > > Gerry- > > Have you found a solution to this? I’m looking for the same thing. > > I considered tearing apart the “upload\_progress” thing but it seems that > only works on certain server versions. I was wondering if there is > maybe a simpler method available for folks like us that don’t need to > send status in the middle of an operation. > > What I would like is something like: > > def do\_operation > render\_progress(‘Working on step 1…’) > … do step 1 … > render\_progress(‘Working on step 2…’) > … do step 2 … > render\_progress(‘Working on step 3…’) > … do step 3 … > render\_progress(‘Complete!’) > end > > Jake ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/5 "2006-01-04T23:24:29Z")
Jake J. wrote: > Have you found a solution to this? I’m looking for the same thing. Well I have a solution using cron and the database, I’m just not very happy with it. I think the drb route is the “right way” to go about it and did consider it but before I sunk too much time into that path I was looking for a sanity check from some other developers. I don’t think you’ll be able to do what you want with rails wrt to the render a bit, do a bit as rails want to composite the entire page before sending it to the browser. If there is a way around this then that would solve both of our problems. Good luck and share your results if find something useful. ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/6 "2006-01-05T00:26:02Z")
Gerry Shaw wrote: > I don’t think you’ll be able to do what you want with rails wrt to the > render a bit, do a bit as rails want to composite the entire page before > sending it to the browser. If there is a way around this then that > would solve both of our problems. > > Good luck and share your results if find something useful. Gerry- Have you seen the “upload\_progress” addition that some have done? It is actually included in Rails, but I think it comes with a caveat that it doesn’t work with all browsers / servers. I read that a modified fcgi server was required. I’m not sure what the current state of this is. However, it seems to me that doing an upload progress bar is actually more difficult to manage than step-wise progress. I’m going to look into this drb thing. Originally, I thought this would just be a nice feature. But given that my app yields an error after about 30 secs, I’m upgrading this to a necessity. Jake ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/7 "2006-01-05T00:33:23Z")
Currently form\_with\_upload\_progress works only with apache and fcgi. Im not sure but i think lighttpd is also supported. Basti Am 05.01.2006 um 00:26 schrieb Jake J.: ---
**Author:** ![Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gerry\_Shaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerry_Shaw)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 1:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-show-progress/51501/8 "2006-01-05T13:06:48Z")
Try this: [http://rails.techno-weenie.net/question/2005/12/24/how\_do\_you\_display\_the\_progress\_of\_a\_long\_running\_action](http://rails.techno-weenie.net/question/2005/12/24/how_do_you_display_the_progress_of_a_long_running_action) Gerry Shaw wrote: > I’m looking for ideas on how you would implement a controller/view in > Rails that needs to show the progress of a possibly 2-3 minute > operation.