# Help me plan my Ruby app :) **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [23 March 2010 00:50 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839 "2010-03-23T00:50:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 00:50 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/1 "2010-03-23T00:50:33Z")
So I am interested in writing a program to read a file I write, with different reminder info in it, and then have it send emails to my account with the proper message on the proper days as reminders for me. Ruby's one of my favorite languages so I thought I'd code it in Ruby. At first thought it seems I would like this software to run all the time, so a web app would make most sense. Then I thought I could probably get away with having it run in the background, and have it start running on startup. The webapp version, seems like the better approach, though I'd like to avoid paying much of anything for the hosting. My bandwidth usage would be TINY, so perhaps something that charges by the bandwidth would be best option for this? (Heroku??) An ideas on what would be some good ideas for a little app like this? Ruby-world specific libraries, or Rails libraries etc... Maybe Rails isn't even the right approach, considering how simple the webapp is; it's really just a extremely simple service; its just a glorified spam bot 馃槈 (for myself) All ideas are welcome. Thanks for the help, Alex > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Ben\_Bleything1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3e96dc/32.png) [@Ben\_Bleything1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Ben_Bleything1)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 02:05 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/2 "2010-03-23T02:05:11Z")
> So I am interested in writing a program to read a file I write, with > different reminder info in it, and then have it send emails to my > account with the proper message on the proper days as reminders for me. Neat! > At first thought it seems I would like this software to run all the > time, so a web app would make most sense. Does it? I don't think so. > Then I thought I could probably get away with having it run in the > background, and have it start running on startup. The webapp version, > seems like the better approach, though I'd like to avoid paying much of > anything for the hosting. My bandwidth usage would be TINY, so perhaps > something that charges by the bandwidth would be best option for this? > (Heroku??) Sure, a webapp is running all the time, but unless there's a request coming in, it's not doing anything. That means that you'd need to automate something to hit the app every so often to get it to do whatever it is you want to do. > An ideas on what would be some good ideas for a little app like this? > Ruby-world specific libraries, or Rails libraries etc... Maybe Rails > isn't even the right approach, considering how simple the webapp is; > it's really just a extremely simple service; its just a glorified spam > bot 馃槈 (for myself) Skip the webapp idea altogether. What you want is a script that can parse a file and for each entry in the file say "do I need to email about this?" and then either do so or move on to the next. Then, set it up to run under cron however often you like, and you're set. You'll likely want to leave behind an artifact of the last run time, so you'll know when the last run was and therefore be able to figure out if any events fired in the meantime. You might be interested in chronic for date parsing: > **[GitHub - mojombo/chronic: Chronic is a pure Ruby natural language date parser.](https://github.com/mojombo/chronic)** > > Chronic is a pure Ruby natural language date parser. - GitHub - mojombo/chronic: Chronic is a pure Ruby natural language date parser. Ben > **路路路** > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 5:50 PM, Alex Baranosky \ wrote: ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 02:57 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/3 "2010-03-23T02:57:38Z")
Oh thanks for the ideas Ben, I guess you're right now that I think of it. I'll have to look into setting cron jobs on windows. > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Ben\_Bleything1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3e96dc/32.png) [@Ben\_Bleything1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Ben_Bleything1)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 03:00 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/4 "2010-03-23T03:00:28Z")
I'm sure there's a native alternative to cron, but I have no idea what it is. I suppose in the worst case you could install it as a service and just sleep in between runs. Ben > **路路路** > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Alex Baranosky \ wrote: > > > I'll have to look into setting cron jobs on windows. ---
**Author:** ![Jorg\_W\_Mittag1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jorg\_W\_Mittag1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Jorg_W_Mittag1)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 04:45 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/5 "2010-03-23T04:45:06Z")
Ben Bleything wrote: > **路路路** > > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Alex Baranosky \ wrote: > > > > > I'll have to look into setting cron jobs on windows. > > > > I'm sure there's a native alternative to cron, but I have no idea what > > it is. > > Task Scheduler, managed through the schtasks.exe command. Something > like: > >     schtasks /Create /SC HOURLY /TN Reminder /TR C:\Path\to\reminder.rb > > jwm ---
**Author:** ![Walton\_Hoops1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/77aa72/32.png) [@Walton\_Hoops1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Walton_Hoops1)\ **Post date:** [23 March 2010 04:45 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/6 "2010-03-23T04:45:32Z")
Scheduled tasks in XP/2003. Task Scheduler in Vista and newer. I agree that they are plenty powerful for this. Another option on a Windows box if your feeling fancy is the win32-service gem for writing Windows services and rufus-scheduler for cron-like behavior. > **路路路** > > On 3/22/2010 9:00 PM, Ben Bleything wrote: > > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Alex Baranosky \ wrote: > >    > > > > > I'll have to look into setting cron jobs on windows. > > >      > > > > I'm sure there's a native alternative to cron, but I have no idea what > > it is. I suppose in the worst case you could install it as a service > > and just sleep in between runs. > > > > Ben ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [26 March 2010 04:39 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/7 "2010-03-26T04:39:56Z")
Very useful jwm, thanks. > **路路路** > > >     schtasks /Create /SC HOURLY /TN Reminder /TR C:\Path\to\reminder.rb > > > > jwm > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [26 March 2010 06:49 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/8 "2010-03-26T06:49:51Z")
So this is what I'm doing so far. I ran this command at the command line to schedule the task: schtasks /Create /SC HOURLY /TN Reminder /TR reminder.bat Then made the reminder.bat as this: @echo off rubyw "c:\......rb" When I run this batch file manually the console doesn't pop up. But when it runs via the scheduled task it IS having the console window popup and quickly disappear... Any idea how to get the console window to never show? > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [27 March 2010 03:36 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/9 "2010-03-27T03:36:09Z")
So the next step for me is figuring out how to send emails from an application on my home pc. I've got actionmailer 3.0 beta setup. How do a I setup a windows box to send emails? > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [30 March 2010 04:27 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/10 "2010-03-30T04:27:58Z")
So guys, I got it sending emails via smtp through my gmail account! I have it parsing my schedule file... And I have it in a .bat file being scheduled to run every hour by schtask. But there's one last hurdle: When I double click the BAT file it runs fine, but when I run it via schtask it doesn't do anything. I can tell it is running because a command window pops up for a split second. Any ideas why it isn't running? Thanks, Alex > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Baranosky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Alex\_Baranosky](https://rubytalk.org/u/Alex_Baranosky)\ **Post date:** [30 March 2010 04:35 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/help-me-plan-my-ruby-app/57839/11 "2010-03-30T04:35:29Z")
Does rubyw only work with 1.9? I switched to using just ruby and it seems to be working 馃檪 Time for bed. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes. > **路路路** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).