class WorkerThread

Helper for running threads in the background, with a timeout and error logging.

Example:

WorkerThread.new.start :timeout => 5.minutes do 
    # long running task here...
    sleep 10.0
end

Public Instance Methods

start(options = nil) { || ... } click to toggle source
# File lib/worker_thread.rb, line 13
def start(options = nil)
        raise 'background_task needs a block' unless block_given?

        options ||= {}

        worker = Thread.new do
                begin
                        yield
                rescue => e
                        $stderr.puts "#{Time.now}\t#{e.class.to_s}\t#{e.message}\n"
                        raise e
                end
        end

        # if the user set a timeout then we need a thread to monitor
        # the worker to make sure it doesn't run too long
        if !options[:timeout].nil?
                Thread.new do
                        sleep options[:timeout].to_f
                        
                        if worker.status != false
                                #$stderr.puts "#{Time.now}\tbackground_task thread timeout\n"
                                worker.kill
                        end
                end
        end

        worker
end