Need a ruby solution for executing a method in separate process.

Question

I am implementing a poller service whose interface looks like this.

poller = Poller.new(SomeClass)
poller.start
poller.stop

The start method is supposed to continuously start hitting an http request and update stuff in the database. Once started, the process is supposed to continue till it is explicitly stoped.

I understand that implementation of start needs to spawn and run in a new process. I am not quite sure how to achieve that in Ruby. I want a ruby solution instead of a ruby framework specific solution (Not rails plugins or sinatra extensions. Just ruby gems). I am exploring eventmachine and starling-workling. I find eventmachine to be too huge to understand in short span and workling is a plugin and not a gem. So it is a pain get it working for Ruby application.

I need guidance on how do I achieve this. Any pointers? Code samples will help.

Edit

Eventmachine or starling-workling solution would be preferred over threading/forking.

Answer 1

class Poller

    def start
       @thread = Thread.new { 
           #Your code here
       } 
    end


    def stop
       @thread.stop
    end

end

Answer 2

Can't you use the example from Process#kill:

class Poller
  def initialize klass
    @klass = klass
  end

  def start
    @pid = fork do
      Signal.trap("HUP") { puts "Ouch!"; exit }
      instance = @klass.new
      # ... do some work ...
    end
  end

  def stop
    Process.kill("HUP", @pid)
    Process.wait
  end
end

Answer 3

Have you considered out the Daemons gem?