# Streaming, Daemons, Cron, the basics?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/streaming-daemons-cron-the-basics/176438>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [September 30, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/streaming-daemons-cron-the-basics/176438 "2009-09-30T15:35:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![viatropos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/8baadc/32.png) [@viatropos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/viatropos)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/streaming-daemons-cron-the-basics/176438/1 "2009-09-30T15:35:12Z")

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Hey there,

I’ve finally had a second to look into streaming, daemons, and cron  
tasks and all the neat gems built around them! But I’m not clear on  
how/when to use these things.

I have a few questions on how/what they are used for that maybe you  
could shed some light on:

1. If I wanted to have a website that stayed constantly updated,  
realtime, with my Facebook friends’ activity feeds, and my Twitter feed,  
would I just create some custom streaming implementation using the  
Daemon gem, the ruby-yali gem for streaming the content, and the  
Whenever gem for every 10 seconds checking the websites to see if  
anything has changed? Is that how it would work? Or is it  
typically/preferably done differently?

2. If I wanted any sort of live/real-time content updating, so that my  
site had up-to-the-minute Amazon book reviews on my favorite books for  
instance, would I use that Daemon/ruby-yali/Whenever combo or something  
like it?

3. Are 1 and 2 too processor intensive? Is there a better way you do  
it, a better way for live content streaming? I’m thinking about just  
sending a request every 30 seconds or so, getting the json/xml result,  
using nokogiri to remove the stuff I don’t need, and then just going  
through the small list of comments/books/posts/etc., and somehow sending  
that to a View.

I guess it all boils down to the question:

How does real-time streaming of the latest content of some website work?  
…so if someone is on my site, they can see in real time the new  
message or new book that just came out?

Thanks for helping me out, I really appreciate it.

Best,  
Lance