Question

I have a Podcast model with one attribute called :url.

A typical :url takes the following form: http://api.mixcloud.com/alivefrommaryhill/jazzcast/ and returns a JSON file

Using hashie and httparty, we can write a method (called get_json) that uses this URL to create a hash from the JSON that it links to:

class Podcast < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :url  

  def get_json
    Hashie::Mash.new HTTParty.get("#{self.url}")
  end   
end

We can then use get_json in our views to style and display the JSON:

#/views/podcasts/index.html.haml
- for podcast in @podcasts  
  = link_to podcast.get_json.name, podcast_path(podcast)
  = podcast.get_json.description
  = image_tag podcast.get_json.pictures.medium

As you can see, each podcast calls get_json three times. I’ve got 21 podcasts and don’t want to call this method more than once per visit since it connects to an external web-service which is very time-consuming. How can I minimize the number of times this method is called and speed things up?

Perhaps I should be doing more in my controller instead of calling the method from my view?

def index
  @podcasts = Podcast.all
end

Any help appreciated

Answer 1

Well, the easiest fix for now would be to save the result of podcast.get_json in a local variable. That’d cut it down to once per podcast.

If you want to further reduce the number of calls, you’d have to figure a way to batch all your requests. I don’t know if that site’s API will let you do that.