观看FTP目录更改，然后发送到Rails应用

Question

I have a Rails app that has a strict requirement of receiving XML files via FTP on port 21.

I have FTP server set up to receive files (outside of the rails app), however I am having trouble finding solutions where I can have uploaded files be sent to my rails app so that they can be processed.

Is there a way to host an FTP server inside a rails app? Is there a way to watch arbitrary folders for changes and processes them?

I am running Rails 4.2.5 , Ruby 2.3.1 on a Ubuntu 14.04 server.

Regards,

Answer 1

The best solution is this:

• Make sure your Rails app can access the dir where XML files are uploaded. (No FTP required here)
• Write a Ruby class ( lib/xml_watcher.rb for instance) that checks the directory for XML files, and processes them accordingly. Ideally, if you're using Resque, all you need to do is schedule a new job for each file.
• Create a rake task that executes above Ruby class
• Schedule a cronjob to periodically execute the above rake task

update: there are more advanced solutions that use IO events to instantly get notification of changed files. This is nice, of course, but it also adds quite a lot of complexity. I prefer the simple just works solution.