Backgroundrb devel - Jan 2009 - Something I just don''t understand about the workers and job_key

Hi everyone, I will try to be concise as possible to explain my  
problem. I building a admin section on my site to manage all my ruby  
scripts. I want to remove the script from cron and put them in  
backgroundrb so every admin user can start/stop those scripts when  
they want.

So the script start first from the scheduler(yml) to be sure they run  
each day. The way I understand bgrb, less worker is better. So I would  
like to reuse the worker started from the scheduler in my rails admin  
to start again the task sync_ezdeal.

I have a worker started from backgroundrb.yml file like this:
---
:backgroundrb:
  :port: 11006
  :ip: 0.0.0.0
  :result_storage: memcache

:memcache: "localhost:11211,localhost:11211"


:schedules:
  :ezdeal_worker:
    :sync_ezdeal:
      :trigger_args: 0 30 3 * * * *
----------------
#This script run each night at 3:30.

My Worker:

class EzdealWorker < BackgrounDRb::MetaWorker
  set_worker_name :ezdeal_worker
  pool_size 1

def sync_ezdeal(args = nil)
	.... #do job
	cache[:filename] = xml_file # This is the filename of a generated xml  
file that the job sync_ezdeal build and save on disk. This filename  
must be unique each time the task sync_ezdeal is called. So i can look  
at the file from the admin site.
end

My call in the controller to start a new job is that:
MiddleMan.worker(:ezdeal_worker).enq_sync_ezdeal(:job_key  
=>current_time, :arg =>{:filename=>current_time,:local
=>''/Users/carl/
gm_core/log/ezdeal/ezdeal.xml''})

The job is queued correctly but when I try to get the :filename that  
doesnt work.

This is my view:


<%
@tasks = BdrbJobQueue.find(:all,:order =>''id DESC'')
@tasks.each do |task|
%>
  <tr>
    <td width="5%" align="center"><%=h
task.id%></td>
    <td width="20%"><%=h task.worker_method %></td>
    <td width="20%"><%=h time_ago_in_words(task.submitted_at)
%></td>
    <td width="20%"><%=h time_ago_in_words(task.started_at)
unless
task.started_at.blank?%></td>
    <td width="20%"><%=h time_ago_in_words(task.finished_at)
if
task.finished? %></td>
    <td width="20%"><%=h task.finished? %></td>
      <td width="20%" align="right">
        <!-- Action td -->
        <%=link_to  
''log_file 
'',ezdeal_log_file_admin_task_path 
(MiddleMan.worker(task.worker_name).ask_result(:filename)) if
task.finished?%>
##### This is were i retreive the filename from the worker. This  
should came from the database?no? like task.args[:filename]
      </td>
    </tr>
  <%end%>

I don''t known how to fetch the filename for each job (with the  
job_key??). Because the ask_result is alway overright when I start a  
new job. The way I understand it is the cache array is the same for  
all workers of the same type. so the cache[:filename] is overight each  
time the sync_ezdeal is called. I tried by creating a new worker each  
time, it''s working, but that look overkill to me.

Is there a way to retreive the good key?

I saw in the database the field args that old the data push in the  
cache array. Is there a way to retreive it? Because currently the data  
look to have strange character in it. In the database it''s a binary  
object.. Not sure what to do with that...

ex:args           |  
\004\010{\007:\015filename"\02414012009_155548:\012local"./Users/carl/
gm_core/log/ezdeal/ezdeal.xml

Thanks for any help!

I hope I am clear enough!

Carl Pelletier