A JRuby library utilizing Java’s concurrency package to create a fixed sized thread pool capable of executing tasks asynchronously.

Useful for long-running tasks to be executed outside of the the Request/Response cycle of a Rails application.

Please remember that ActiveRecord connections may be closed if you pass an AR model into a background task. It is recommended to pass the id and re-query the database inside the task so as everything is thread-safe.

When using inside Rails, it is also recommended to initialize the logger by creating <RAILS_ROOT>/config/initializers/j_background_initializer.rb

JBackground::Base.logger = RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER
JBackground::Base.pool_size = 5
JBackground::Base.instance # force creation of the pool before using inside a request

JBackground.execute do
  puts "Hello from Thread #{Thread.current.object_id}" 
end

JBackground.execute('Alan', 'Bob', 'Cory') do |x,y,z| 
  puts "Hello #{x}, #{y}, and #{z}"
end

class ExampleTask < JBackground::Task
  def execute_task
    puts "Hello from ExampleTask" 
  end
end

JBackground.execute(ExampleTask.new)

Copyright © 2009 Cory Osborn. See LICENSE for details.