Should I be using Feedzirra in the model? - ruby

Question

I'm playing about with the Ruby Feedzirra gem and have managed to acheive what I set out to do by using it in the controller.
Though everything I've seen has mentioned using it in the model. I was just wondering if this is ok to do in the controller, if not, how might I go about achieving the same in the model?
I want to submit a Feed URL and use that to update my model with the rest of the information about the feed.
Feeds_controller.rb
def create
#feed = Feed.new(params[:feed])
feed = Feedzirra::Feed.fetch_and_parse(#feed.feed_url)
#feed.title = feed.title
#feed.url = feed.url
#feed.last_modified = feed.last_modified
respond_to do |format|
if #feed.save
format.html { redirect_to #feed, notice: 'Feed was successfully created.' }
format.json { render json: #feed, status: :created, location: #feed }
else
format.html { render action: "new" }
format.json { render json: #feed.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
feed.rb
class Feed < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :feed_url, :last_modified, :title, :url
end

Answer 1

I'd make an instance method on the Model and use that in the controller so
class Feed < ActiveRecord::Base
def fetch!
feed = Feedzirra::Feed.fetch_and_parse(feed_url) # probably want some eror handling here
title = feed.title
url = feed.url
last_modified = feed.last_modified
self #or nil if you like
end
end
then your controller thins down to
def create
#feed = Feed.new(params[:feed])
#feed.fetch!
respond_to do |format|
if #feed.save
format.html { redirect_to #feed, notice: 'Feed was successfully created.' }
format.json { render json: #feed, status: :created, location: #feed }
else
format.html { render action: "new" }
format.json { render json: #feed.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
The cool thing here is that if this gets too slow you can use something like Resque to run this in the background and just return a "your request is being processed" message to the user, then alert them asynchronously when the the request is done (might not work so well for the json request)

Answer 2

You really don't want to use something like a RSS parser in your controller. That will slow the responsiveness of that URL and your server.
Instead, run the RSS parser in a separate application, or at least a separate thread, and store the retrieved feeds in a database table for rapid access.