How do I run Ruby tasks that use my Rails models?

Question

I have a Rails app with some basic models. The website displays data retrieved from other sources. So I need to write a Ruby script that creates new instances in my database. I

Answer 1

There are few steps to this and more details needed to really answer well.

You say your site retrieves data from other sources? How often? If it is semi-regularly you definitely want to look into background processing/messaging. If it is frequently you really want to avoid loading your rails environment every time your script runs since you will be paying too high a startup tax each time.

There are a multitude of options out there you will want to research. Reading about each of them, particularly reviews from people who post about why they made the choice they did, will give you a good feel for what questions you need to ask yourself before you make your choice. How big a job is loading the data? etc...

Off the top of my head these are some of the things you may want to look into

Script/Runner & Cron Background/RB Starling Workling MemcacheQ Beanstalk Background Job (Bj) delayed_job (Dj) Daemon Generator