Introduction

This is a simple implementation of a file spooler. You can think of it as a filesystem based queueing service without a service running behind it. Like the spools used in unix for mail servers, print jobs, etc.

In this module, a Pool instance can contain several different Spool instances, each of which can store files. Data is retrieved from the Spool in a non-strict order, oldest first.

Data is serialized and deserialized on storage/retrieval (currently using YAML).

Most users will want to start using this library by instantiating a Pool object, pointing it to a directory that will act as the parent directory for all subsequent Spools.

Note

This library has currently only been tested with Ruby 1.9.1. It uses Pathname extensively, and while it might work with Ruby 1.8.7, it probably will not work with Ruby 1.8.6 and smaller.

Usage Example

# instatiate a pool, pointing to a directory with # read/write permissions for the effective user of # the current process

require ‘spool_pool’ pool = SpoolPool::Pool.new( “/path/to/my/spool/root” )

# store data in one spool pool.put :my_spool, “some data here”

# retrieve the data

pool.get :my_spool # -> “some data here”

# store data in another spool, # demonstrating the ordered retrieval

pool.put :my_other_spool, :foo

sleep 1

spool.put :my_other_spool, :bar

spool.get :my_other_spool # -> :foo

spool.get :my_other_spool # -> :bar

Feedback/Suggestions

By email to: sr@gimp.org