CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
Sky
Sky

Reputation: 4853

Calling a model method at a specific time (Ruby on Rails)

I have a Ruby on Rails model that has a column called expiration_date. Once the expiration date is reached, I want another column on the model to be modified (e.g. expired = true). What are some good ways of doing this?

Ideally I'd like a model function to be called at the exact moment the expiry date is reached.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 2147

Answers (3)

Harish Shetty
Harish Shetty

Reputation: 64373

Use delayed_job gem. After installing delayed_job gem do the following:

class Model < ActiveRecord::Base

  after_create :set_expiry_timer

  # register the timer
  def set_expiry_timer
    delay(:run_at => expiration_date).expire
  end

  def expire
    update_attribute(:expired, true) unless expired?
  end

end

Upvotes: 6

Mark Sands
Mark Sands

Reputation: 1529

Have you considered using a scheduler to automate this? Something like Resque, Delayed Job or Cron would work fine.

Then in your scheduled task you could have something like this:

if foo.expiration_date < Time.now
  foo.is_expired = true
  foo.save
end

Upvotes: 0

alf
alf

Reputation: 18550

For the scenario you describe, the best solution is to have an expired method instead of a column, that would return true iff the expiration_date is greater or equal than the current date.

For other scenarios, I would go with a DB scheduled event triggering a stored procedure. That procedure would check the expiration_date column for all the rows in the model table, and update the expired (or other(s)) column(s) accordingly.

Upvotes: 2

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