I am trying to build web based file archiving app (like Apple Time Machine) that watches an external hard drive and when ever a file/folder is added it writes the file path to a database that can be searched later. So if user added this folder “My Folder” on this date “04/16/12” to external HD “Drive 1” and needed to find that folder or its contents at a later date they could search the name, date or drive name and the corresponding results would be returned.
Is this possible with RoR or would I have to use another language or a combination of the two?
Ruby can access the local system, see here for some examples of Disk IO operations possible:
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/ruby_input_output.htm
Obviously, this means the ruby must be running on the local disk. In theory, RoR could be used along with vanilla ruby code for this purpose, so long as it was all running locally. Seems like a hassle to setup a web server simply for some software to use however.
See this question for a discussion of Ruby frameworks that aren’t for web apps:
Ruby App MVC framework (not web)