# Populating database outside of applicaiton

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/populating-database-outside-of-applicaiton/163575>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 22, 2009, 11:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/populating-database-outside-of-applicaiton/163575 "2009-03-22T11:10:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2009, 11:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/populating-database-outside-of-applicaiton/163575/1 "2009-03-22T11:10:28Z")

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Im learning rails now and what id like to do is aggregate data from  
external sources on a daily basis into my database. Within my users can  
searhc and filter through that data to their hearts content.

Assuming i can get this external data say via rss feeds or good old  
screen scraping what tools can i use to get it into my db outside of my  
app? can I use active record for this? or is best to do it some other  
way.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/populating-database-outside-of-applicaiton/163575/2 "2009-03-22T15:26:39Z")

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You can use a background process that runs independently of your web  
listeners. You can use something like Background DRB or some other  
background daemon. From there you can call any of your methods in your  
application to populate the appropriate tables.