Network calls from inside Rails app

Hi,

I take it that when writing facebook apps, you are going to be executing remote network calls to FB from inside your application?

So, if FB takes a second or two to respond, your mongrel/thin process is going to be stuck handling that. Thus, if you have 3 mongrels or thins running, you could concievably only handle a few responses a second if each response requires a callback to FB.

Am I understanding that correctly?

In general, anyone I gotta execute a remote call, I like to use backgroundjob or backgroundrb, something that gets the network call outta the rails process.

Doh, saw that was addressed in the book, using starling. I’ve wanted an excuse to check out that project, now I’ve got it!

Wonder what the pros/cons are of starling over bj?

bj uses a process for each task, I believe. The apps I build process millions of messages per day, so we need something that is very lightweight. For lower volumes, I’ve heard bj and backgroundrb are great.

I wrote this small daemon for processing Facebook publisher actions:

http://pastie.org/216690

It look good?