Question

I’m writing a web site with rails, which can let visitors inputing some domains and check if they had been regiestered.

When user clicked “Submit” button, my web site will try to post some data to another web site, and read the result back. But that website is slow for me, each request need 2 or 3 seconds. So I’m worried about the performance.

For example, if my web server allows 100 processes at most, that there are only 30 or 40 users can visit my website at the same time. This is not acceptable, is there any way to improve the performance?

PS:
At first, I want to use ajax reading that web site, but because of the “cross-domain” problem, it doesn’t work. So I have to use this “ajax proxy” solution.

Answer 1

It’s a bit more work, but you can use something like DelayedJob to process the requests to the other site in the background.

DelayedJob creates separate worker processes that look at a jobs table for stuff to do. When the user clicks submit, such a job is created, and starts running in one of those workers. This off-loads your Rails workers, and keeps your website snappy.

However, you will have to create some sort of polling mechanism in the browser while the job is running. Perhaps using a refresh or some simple AJAX. That way, the visitor could see a message such as “One moment, please…”, and after a while, the actual results.