Question

I’m not sure if its the best idea to create a background job that scans the database all the time for updated product prices, especially when in my application I expect to have 100,000s if not millions of products being observed for lower prices.

I have two models, Product and Price. a Product can have many different Prices. So the way I thought it should be done was:

1. Subscribe to a Product.
2. Create background job that scans database every hour for lower prices.
3. Notify users by email.

I’m not sure about #2 and if that’s the best way for it to be done. What would you guys suggest?

Answer 1

If your Rails app is adding new Price objects to the Products in its database, why not have an ActiveRecord callback (after_create in this instance) every time a new Price object is added?

That ActiveRecord callback could start a delayed job to email the user about the new, lower price.