Question

I’m using Ruby threads like this:

threads = []

for page in pages
  threads << Thread.new(page) { |myPage|

    h = Net::HTTP.new(myPage, 80)
    puts "Fetching: #{myPage}"
    resp, data = h.get('/', nil )
    puts "Got #{myPage}:  #{resp.message}"
  }
end

threads.each { |aThread|  aThread.join }

Let’s say I wanted to kill all threads that are still running after a minute. How would I do this?

Answer 1

I usually timeout my operations with Timeout:

require "timeout"
Timeout.timeout(seconds) do
 ...
end

Maybe this can help, so in your case, I think something like this should work:

begin
  Timeout.timeout(5) do
    for page in pages
      threads << Thread.new(page) { |myPage|

        h = Net::HTTP.new(myPage, 80)
        puts "Fetching: #{myPage}"
        resp, data = h.get('/', nil )
        puts "Got #{myPage}:  #{resp.message}"
      }
    end
    threads.each { |aThread|  aThread.join }
  end
rescue Timeout::Error
   # kill threads here
end 

But are you sure your controller is the best place to be doing this? Wouldn’t they be better off in a background task?