PDF-Barcode-Background process questions

Hello Everyone,

I have been lurking here for awhile and now have some questions to ask the group. I am rewriting an application from .NET and was wondering on what gems to use and also advice on how to approach a couple of things architecturally.

- Best PDF component? Prawn? I will need to embed images and add complex form layouts. - Datamatrix bar code generator (image) / reader (PDF or Image) - Backgroud process that runs every 5 minutes(pulls images from WebService and saves them to Amazon S3)

Has anyone done something similar or have seen some articles/blog posts on what im trying to do? I'm really struggling to find good information on reading/writing barcodes.

Thanks,

Todd

  • Best PDF component? Prawn? I will need to embed images and add complex form layouts.

PrinceXML is the best PDF generator by far for complex layouts, but it will cost you (http://princexml.com/). You can run Prince without a license to try it out though, so see if it fits your requirements. The Princely gem will integrate it in your Rails app (https://github.com/mbleigh/princely)

  • Datamatrix bar code generator (image) / reader (PDF or Image)

http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_thread/thread/a22a01e80ec3740b?pli=1

  • Backgroud process that runs every 5 minutes(pulls images from WebService and saves them to Amazon S3)

https://github.com/defunkt/resque or https://github.com/ezmobius/nanite are good options, there’s others around. There’s plenty of posts around if you just google “background job rails3” or google the gems I mentioned.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

Thanks Peter..i'm checking them out now.