Rails - Sep 2009 - rake tasks

I''m not really creating a rails app, but may integrate this with rails 
down the road.

I''ve adapted rss2mysql.rb from:

Practical Ruby Gems
http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781590598115

Chapter 10, parsing feeds

but am tweaking everything.  Currently I have a rakefile, but am a bit 
unclear about what sort of tasks go in there.  For instance, grabbing rss 
data from the interwebs could be a task, so maybe it should go in the 
rake file?

Also, the rake file should have provisions to add/drop tables?

I started to put some of the db interactions into the rakefile, and then 
thought that maybe everything in this file (script?) belongs in a 
rakefile. Where do you draw the line?


thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ 
thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ cat rss2mysql.rb 
require ''rubygems''
require ''active_record''
require ''feed_tools''
require ''yaml''

db = YAML.load_file("database.yml")
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  :adapter  => db["adapter"],
  :host     => db["host"],
  :username => db["username"],
  :password => db["password"],
  :database => db["database"])
class Item <  ActiveRecord::Base
end

unless Item.table_exists?
  ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
    create_table :items do |t|
        t.column :title, :string
        t.column :content, :string
        t.column :source, :string
        t.column :url, :string
        t.column :timestamp, :timestamp
        t.column :keyword_id, :integer
        t.column :guid, :string
        t.column :html, :string
      end
  end
end

puts "connected"


#feed =
FeedTools::Feed.open(''http://www.slashdot.org/index.rss'')
feed =
FeedTools::Feed.open(''www.amazon.com/rss/tag/blu-ray/new'')

feed.items.each do |feed_item|
  if not (Item.find_by_title(feed_item.title)      \
    or Item.find_by_url(feed_item.link)            \
    or Item.find_by_guid(feed_item.guid))
  puts "processing item ''#{feed_item.title}'' - new"

    Items.new do |newitem|
       newitem.title=feed_item.title.gsub(/<[^>]*>/,
'''')
       newitem.guid=feed_item.guid
       if feed_item.publisher.name
           newitem.source=feed_item.publisher.name
       end
       newitem.url=feed_item.link
       newitem.content=feed_item.description
       newitem.timestamp=feed_item.published
       newitem.save
    end
  else
    puts "processing item ''#{feed_item.title}'' -
old"
  end
end


thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ 



Also, what sort of IDE is popular for ruby?  Eclipse?


thanks,

Thufir

On Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:17:05 +0000, Thufir wrote:
> I''m not really creating a rails app, but may integrate this with
rails
> down the road.
> 
> I''ve adapted rss2mysql.rb from:
> 
> Practical Ruby Gems
> http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781590598115
> 
> Chapter 10, parsing feeds
I broke that code into three rake tasks:

thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ 
thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ rake --tasks
(in /home/thufir/rb)
rake connect   # connects to db
rake exists    # creates table unless it already exists
rake populate  # gets rss data
thufir@ARRAKIS:~/rb$ 

so that exists and populate depend upon the connect task.  Is this 
reasonably compatible with RoR?



thanks,

Thufir

On Sep 20, 6:20 am, Rick
<richard.t.ll...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Rake, like it''s namesake Make, is useful for organizing complex
tasks
> that typicallly have other complex tasks as preconditions.  It''s
> typically used to organize "build cycle" stages which are passed
> through on the way to presenting the completed project (document,
> test, application, installation, ...).
Right, in this case I''m automating creating, destroying and populating
a db.  Is that inappropriate somehow?


-Thufir