This is a gem to help make it easier to make a worker that runs for a while and pulls off IronMQ for processing. This is particularly good for short quick jobs like sending notifications and what not, things that take a few seconds or less.

The framework basically has two files you put your code in:

1. usersetup.rb - this is where you setup database connections and other client libs to connect to other services.
2. usercode.rb - this is where the actually work goes and you can use your connections from usersetup.rb in here.

Then you just upload your worker as usual, set a schedule or alert pattern and you're done.

Benefits:

• Only loads once so jobs can process faster and cheaper
• Can run locally and remote in the same way
• HUD could have easy editor (usersetup and usercode text boxes)

Can use with scheduler or alerts.

First thing is to get things running locally.

To do that, make three files, iron.json, usersetup.rb and usercode.rb. OR to make this all faster, go git clone this repository and just modify the files: https://github.com/iron-io/iron_consumer_starter

This is a normal Iron.io config file and should contain your project id and token (you can download this from HUD if you want).

{
    "token": "X",
    "project_id": "Y"
}

Put all your stuff in here to setup the worker such as making database connections, api clients, etc. Put them into the special hash called connections (todo: should that have a more generic name?). For example:

require 'mongo'
require 'twilio-ruby'

db = Mongo::MongoClient.from_uri("mongodb://username:pass@x.mongolab.com:12345/tester")
# Put this into the special connections map
IronConsumer.connections['mymongo'] = db.db()

This is where you'll write the code that actually does the work. The message will be available with IronConsumer.message and this will be a normal IronMQ message from the iron_mq gem.

Typically you'll parse the message body and then do your thing. For example:

puts "Got message"
puts IronConsumer.message.body

# transform body or generate something or do whatever
username = "Travis" # Would normally get this from database for user
body = IronConsumer.message.body.gsub("#NAME#", username)

# Now post this new stuff into the database.
IronConsumer.connections["mymongo"].collection('msgs').insert({'body' => body})

# And/or send email, post to social media, send notifications to mobile phone, etc.

Just create a simple file called local.rb and put this in it:

require 'iron_consumer'
IronConsumer.run(workqueue: 'my_queue')

Once you've got it working, just upload it to IronWorker.

Run iron_worker upload consumer to get your code onto the IronWorker system.

Run `iron_worker schedule

require 'iron_mq'

mq = IronMQ::Client.new()
# Same queue name you are reading from
qname = "testq"
queue = mq.queue(qname)
msg = {
    "mystring" => "Hello #NAME#!"
}
queue.post(msg.to_json)