(removed/reposted)
One of the things I've loved about rails is the ease with which you
can leverage your existing app code for shell/cli/scripting purposes
using ./script/console and ./script/runner. As such, I highly
recommend implementing your parsing/processing code from within your
rails app, versus having some separate ruby code that parses/processes
data and persists it directly in the db.
The major benefits of doing this is flexibility and d-r-y-ness of your
code by: leveraging all of your existing code/rules/etc for persisting
such data in the db; ability to easily test all of the pieces that
make up that processing just like any other part of your rails app;
ability to call such processing from both within your rails app via a
controller or via console or runner; easily perform such processing
against test, dev, or prod dbs; ....
So, say the model ob you need to process data for is Foo, and the dir
that your client is uploading new data files to is found under your
proj root in ./private/newdata, and when a file is successfully
processed it is mv'd to ./private/processeddata, and you log
processing attempts in ./log/foo_processor.log, ....:
# in ./app/models/foo.rb
...
PROJ_DIR = File.expand_path("#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../..")
NEWDATA_DIR = "#{PROJ_DIR}/private/newdata"
PROCESSEDDATA_DIR = "#{PROJ_DIR}/private/processeddata"
PROCESSOR_LOG = "#{PROJ_DIR}/log/foo_processor.log"
...
def Foo.process_data(somefile=nil, is_debug=false)
# if not somefile, grab list of un-processed NEWDATA_DIR files,
# ... and process data ....
...
end
...
You could then call that class meth in some controller for uploading/
processing new data via your app:
# in ./app/controller/some_such_controller.rb
...
def upload_newdata
...
# after saving successfully uploaded datafile in NEWDATA_DIR ...
Foo.process_data(datafile_name)
...
end
or call it in some console session:
$ ./script/console development
...
> Foo.process_data('some_datafile.txt', true)
...
or call it from shell/cli via runner:
$ ./script/runner -e development 'Foo.process_data
("some_other_datafile.txt", true)'
...
or call it via cron:
# in appropriate crontab ...
...
# at 2:03am every night, process all new datafiles in production env:
3 2 * * * appuser /path/to/proj/script/runner -e production
'Foo.process_data' 2>&1
...
Jeff
On Feb 22, 6:45 pm, bongoman <infoa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there
>
> I have a Rails app running that needs to have it's database
> periodically updated from an upload of a text file.
>
> The data file is in UIEE format and I'm working on a Ruby script that
> parses the file and inserts the data into MySQL. That should be OK I
> think at this stage.
>
> However I need to automate this process - basically the client is
> uploading the UIEE file to a prescribed directory on the remote
> server. I then either need to detect whether there has been a fresh
> upload OR rely on cron to look into the directory and then parse the
> fresh file (if present).
>
> Am I on the right track looking at cron to do this? Maybe I'm better
> building an admin page where the user can manually trigger the running
> of the database update script? Or is there another unix command that
> can detect a change in a directory and thereby trigger the script?
>
> Any clues on how best to approach this situation would be
> appreciated...
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