Rails - Creating temp files in a portable way

Question

My rails application runs on a Ubuntu server machine.

I need to create temporary files in order to \"feed\" them to a second, independent app (I\'ll be using rake tasks

Answer 1

tmp/ is definitively the right place to put the files.

The best way I've found of creating files on that folder is using ruby's tempfile library.

The code looks like this:

require 'tempfile'

def foo()
  # creates a temporary file in tmp/
  Tempfile.open('prefix', Rails.root.join('tmp') ) do |f|
    f.print('a temp message')
    f.flush
    #... do more stuff with f
  end
end

I like this solution because:

• It generates random file names automatically (you can provide a prefix)
• It automatically deletes the files when they are no longer used. For example, if invoked on a rake task, the files are removed when the rake task ends.

Answer 2

Rails apps also have their own tmp/ directory. I guess that one is always available and thus a good candidate to use and keep your application portable.