Using griddler with delayed jobs

[echan00]

I'm trying to use delayed_jobs (background workers) to process my incoming email.

class EmailProcessor

  def initialize(email)
    @raw_html = email.raw_html
    @subject = email.subject
  end

  def process
    do something with @raw_html & @subject
  end
  handle_asynchronously :process, :priority => 20

end

The problem is I can't pass instance variables (@raw_html & @subject) into delayed jobs. Delayed jobs requests that I save data into the model to be retrieved in the background task, but I would prefer to have a background worker complete the entire task (including saving the record).

Any thoughts?

[wingrunr21]

Hmm, well I think you'll have to persist the data in some way so that delayed_job can pull it back out. I've got a few ideas:

• Use a fast, persistent cache of some type if you do not want to write to the database. You can use the email's ID as your key.
• Create a very light weight model. Call it UnprocessedEmail or something. The idea would be to persist incoming emails as quickly as possible.
• Use a lightweight background processor to do the initial persist (like sucker_punch and then have delayed_job do the heavy lifting
• Use sucker_punch to do the entire processing of the email

You could also just spawn a thread to do the job of sucker_punch if you don't want to pull in all the dependencies (although obviously then you have to manage the thread-safety aspects).

[echan00]

Thanks @wingrunr21, all great ideas. Will try them!