[Backgroundrb-devel] Using BackgrounDRb to replace nested loops?

[Jacob Patton]

In response to my Rails Weenie post today[1], someone mentioned that  
I try BackgrounDRb to help take the strain off my application.

1: http://rails.techno-weenie.net/question/2006/7/13/nested-loops- 
best-way-to-send-messages-to-blog-subscribers

I've just tried to install and use BackgrounDRb with my app, but I'm  
afraid that I'm not too versed in running processes like these, and I  
can't get the caching to work--I get this error: private method  
`cache' called for #<BackgrounDRb::MiddleMan: 
0x254f9b0>:BackgrounDRb::MiddleMan

Would someone help me by looking over my Rails Weenie question,  
below, and recommend to me whether BackgrounDRb will help me with my  
problem?

(Thanks for the great site, as always, Ezra, and it was good meeting  
you after the Workshop for Good Event, too!)

 From the Rails Weenie post:

I run a members-only blog where subscribers can opt to receive  
messages in given categories via email in real-time or daily/weekly  
digests. What’s the best way to deliver the digest messages without  
pushing my app into an ugly, processor-hungry loop?
Each message belongs to a given category, and each subscriber can  
subscribe to 0-n categories to receive updates. Right now the daily  
emails are sent as soon as a message is posted:

    1. # within the create action...after the message is saved:
    2.
    3. # get subscribers to this category
    4. @subscribers = @msg.category.subscribers
    5.
    6. # loop through the subscribers, delivering the message to each  
one
    7. for subscriber in @subscribers
    8. MsgNotifier.deliver_update(@msg)
    9. end

This causes a slight delay upon posting--the message has to be sent  
to all the subscribers for this category--but it works. (I'm not  
terribly concerned about the delay in this part, for now, but if  
anyone has a suggestion on how to improve things, I'd love to hear  
it.) The real problem arises, however, when I'm trying to compile the  
messages for daily and weekly digests:

    1. # get all real-time subscribers
    2. @subscribers = User.find_all_by_freq('real-time')
    3.
    4. # loop through subscribers
    5. for subscriber in @subscribers
    6.
    7. @text = nil
    8.
    9. # get categories for subscriber
   10. @categories = subscriber.categories
   11.
   12. # loop through categories
   13. for category in @categories
   14.
   15. # get messages posted in that category in the past day
   16. @msgs = category.messages(:conditions => "[created_at > ?],  
1.day.ago")
   17.
   18. # loop through messages
   19. for msg in @msgs
   20.
   21. # concatenate the messages for that category
   22. @text += msg.body
   23. end
   24. end
   25. end
   26.
   27. # deliver subscriber's update containing all of the past days  
messages
   28. MsgNotifier.deliver_daily(@subscriber, @text)
   29.
   30. # unset @text
   31. @text = nil
   32. end

As you can see, this is really, really ugly. Is there a better way to  
gather together the content for the digest messages? I'm open to any  
suggestions--this code is very, very slow right now...
=

Best,

Jacob Patton