Hi there,
I am trying to figure out how to do something in Rails.
Here’s the situation:
I want to store in the DB (as fields) info found in a text file. I’ve
created a ruby scripted, where I “isolate” the area with the text I
want(just to test, or play around).
I need a guideline on the approach…
I want my user, to upload a text file, and then Rails should use this
file
to isolate the needed text and store it to the DB.
Any Ideas?
PS. I consider myself a rails newbie, so excuse my unawareness in
advance 
Have a nice day,
Yours,
G.
Hi George,
" Isolate the area with the text you want " , example ?
Ideally it looks like you have to grab a book of regular expressions.
Cheers
Vivek
Hi again
" Isolate the area with the text you want " , example ?
This is how:
def read_file(file_name)
temp = File.open(file_name, “r”).read
data = temp.split("\n")
lookup_item = temp.match(/\tSystem Information/)
puts lookup_item.to_s + " <------lookup item"
@my_match = data.index(lookup_item.to_s)
puts data[@my_match + 1]
puts data[@my_match + 2]
return @my_match
end
puts “Start”
puts read_file("./test_info.txt")
puts “End”
Ideally it looks like you have to grab a book of regular expressions.
It was the first thing I did 
Now I need to find a way to use this^, in my rails project
On Dec 1, 2014, at 6:12 AM, George S. [email protected] wrote:
PS. I consider myself a rails newbie, so excuse my unawareness in advance 
Have a nice day,
Yours,
G.
If you have already worked out how you’re going to scrape the data from
the text file, then the plumbing of uploading a file and post-processing
it will depend slightly on the technique that you use to accept the
uploaded file and store it. I built something similar (years ago, my
first commercial Rails job) that used Paperclip to upload a PDF, and a
custom “thumbnail” processor to extract the plain text contents from the
file after it was stored on disk. I doubt that the code would be helpful
to you, as this was Rails 2.3, and everything has moved a long way from
that point. But the key is to accept the file, store it to disk, then in
an after_post_process (Paperclip custom life-cycle event) block, do your
magic to the uploaded file.
To do this in stages, work through the Readme on
GitHub - thoughtbot/paperclip: Easy file attachment management for ActiveRecord and get your app to accept the
uploaded file. Then read up on custom processors in the Paperclip wiki
on Github. If your question is about text processing, then the previous
comment about Regular Expressions is indeed where you need to look. I
can recommend Mastering Regular Expressions (Friedl, from OReilly
Publishing).
Walter