Difficult RoR Project...

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I'm currently working on a data analysis project that involves analysing and then injecting to my main database data held on a number of different remote servers. My main RoR application is basically a web viewer for the analysed data but it is also going to be used to configure the data analysis on the remote machines.

I'm currently using the settings plugin found at Beautiful Pixel (Search results for: Settings) (see the 4 posts about the settings plugin) and it works nicely.

What I would like to be able to do is have small ruby apps located on the remote machines that utilise this settings plugin and my activerecord models to work out what data to analyse and then to inject the results into my database. The scripts will be run periodically as cron jobs or something similar.

Is it possible to utilise these aspects of my RoR application in remote scripts? Would it be better to build controllers into the RoR app and the scripts just call these controllers via xmlrpc, soap or as http requests to deal with data entry etc.?

I'm quite new to projects of this size and so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Toby

2

Ok, after thinking about it a little more, it makes sense to use either a web service like XML-RPC or SOAP or take the RESTful approach.

I have used XML-RPC before but not the RESTful approach. How do you call a method on the server when using REST from say a script that runs on a linux box? Is it possible? Does it make more sense just to use XML-RPC for this?

Thanks, Toby

3

You mean activeresource ?

4

Could you elaborate? I haven't used activeresource before...

Thanks, Toby

5

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=pFY&q=rails+activeresource+tutorial&btnG=Search&meta= http://dev.rubyonrails.org/browser/trunk/activeresource/README

6

Thanks.

7

I'm using rails 1.2. How do I get hold of activeresource? Is there a plugin? Or do I have to go on edge?