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?
I have some code that reads and works on each
row of an array. Is it possible for Ruby on Rails
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
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.
Jamie