Hello all,
I have some code that reads and works on each row of an array. Is it
possible for Ruby on Rails to to display in a view/webpage each row as
it is processed.
The idea is that I want the user of the app to see the progress that
the app is making as the action runs.
EG the user sees the following appear as the rails action runs…
“row 1 is processed…”
then as row 2 is processed
“row 1 is processed…
row 2 is processed…”
etc etc
I believe this is achieved in PHP by flushing the output buffer…
Can this be achieved with rails?
Thanks in advance!! 
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
jamietssg wrote:
“row 1 is processed…”
then as row 2 is processed
“row 1 is processed…
row 2 is processed…”
etc etc
Rails runs in a pretty strict request - response cycle. Each request
fires
up an instance of Rails which constructs and returns a response. One
response per request. What you’re describing can be accomplished in a
couple of ways (at least), but unless the row processing takes a
substantial
amount of time (per row) you may not find either worth your while.
Having
said that …
One way to handle this would be to utilize background processing via
BackgrounDRb. You’d feed it the array and query it periodically from
the
client to get status.
Another way would be to set up the processing so that the client
actually
requests processing of one line, the server responds with status when
that’s
complete, the response triggers some JS function which issues a new
request
to the server to process the next entry in the array, etc.
BackgrounDRb is, IMHO, probably the easier way to go from a programming
perspective but, depending on your production support, you may not want
/ be
able to support distributed processing.
HTH,
Bill
