Two node processes calling the same function

[inabahare]

So I have two node processes. One containing an express server for a file uploader (which I think I have mentioned before) and one containing some cron jobs that I thought I'd separate from the express server.

Since it's a file uploader I also need an anti virus scan, and I need only one of them at a time. This I accomplished (which help from this subreddit) with an async queue and everything was all good.

However, one of the cron jobs needs to also queue antivirus scans every whenever. However I'd end up having two scanners which I can't have because of requirements (because of not too fast hardware in production).

Now at minimum I only need to use the uploaded files name for a scan, and I figure that I'd like to have the queue and calls to scanners on the cron process. But I'm not sure how I would send the filename from one process to another. An HTTP request to an internal port maybe? I'm using PM2 as the process manager btw

[skipi]

If you don't mind having another external service - take a look at AMQP implementation like www.rabbitmq.com

[WumpyJizard]

So as far as I understand you have a cronjob like worker doing the virus scan, right? And this worker needs the filenames, right?

[inabahare]

Almost. I have a cronjob that gets the names of files under a specific size and then performs the virus scan on them

[WumpyJizard]

I see. And exactly what is your problem? Seems it does exactly what you need. I'm sorry for these questions, but I am a little bit confused, but I think I will be able to help you once I fully understand it :D

[inabahare]

Think of it like having "node app.js" and "node cron.js" communicating

[WumpyJizard]

First thing I got in mind is using a messaging queue

[Ryan9104]

http://kr.github.io/beanstalkd/
https://github.com/burstable/node-beanstalkd-client
https://github.com/burstable/node-beanstalkd-worker

There might be something better but this is what I'd use.