Shown below is an example where we expect some target object to return a JSON response (eg from a REST call) and where we furthermore expect that response to contain an 'id' key with a certain value.

The implementation of the 'Target' class is not shown here. It could be any Ruby class in your system. In the example, an instance of that class serves as the 'target' that you want to repeatedly call and verify. Please note that you could also call a method directly on a class, there is no requirement for the target to be 'newable'.

require 'try-until'
require 'json'

include TryUntil

probe = Probe.new(Target.new, method_sym, [arg_1, arg_2, ...])

result = Repeatedly.new(probe)
  .attempts(5)
  .interval(10)
  .delay(10)
  .rescues([ ArgumentError, IOError ])
  .stop_when(lambda { |response| JSON.parse(response.body)['id'] == 'some_id' })
  .log_to($stdout)
  .execute

The settings above mean:

• try up to five times
• waiting ten seconds between tries
• with an initial delay of ten seconds
• rescue from ArgumentError and IOError (all others will bubble up)
• stop when response document contains 'id' with value 'some_id'
• log status (condition met, number of attempts left) to stdout for each try

Not all of these settings are required. These are the default values:

attempts   = 3
interval   = 0
delay      = 0
rescues    = []
stop_when  = lambda { |response| false }
log_to     = TryUntil::NullPrinter.new

In other words, you could simply do this, in case the default values suit your needs:

require 'try-until'

include TryUntil

probe = Probe.new(Target.new, method_sym, [arg_1, arg_2, ...])

result = Repeatedly.new(probe).execute

You will most likely want to have at least a sensible value for stop_when though.

CAUTION: Any lambda you create for the 'stop_when' field MUST expect ONE parameter as shown above (arbitrarily named 'response' in this example). It will receive the target object's response. If you forget to supply this parameter, you will run into the dreaded 'wrong number of arguments (1 for 0)' problem.

This gem has (once upon a time) been developed in MRI 1.9.3 and is now being continuously integrated on Travis CI using MRI 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x and JRuby 9.0.4.0. Big Kudos to the Travis CI team!

It is pretty certain that the gem will still work in Ruby 1.9.3, but some of the development-time dependencies no longer work in that ancient version, so the Travis builds for these versions had to be removed.

Pull requests, issue reports and feedback in general are appreciated.

Please let me know what's missing / what would make sense for you