Node for Not HTTP

The talk gave an overview of some of the cool things you can do with node.js that are not related to websites. To do this, I cobbled together an actionhero project that would take input form HTTP, WebSockets, Telnet, and twitter which allowed us to turn a desk lamp on and off. I taught a room about the DMX lighting protocol and how to build an actionhero server in 20 minutes!

- Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jijGOARfeMDSqZnl52uv3N9zL8K4Eiu4g6wGTtUIll4
- Github Project: https://github.com/evantahler/nodefornot_http
- Video: http://strongloop.com/node-js/videos/#An-Introduction-to-Non-HTTP-Clients-for-Node.js

Transcript

1. Node.js for !(HTTP) @evantahler https://github.com/evantahler/node_for_not_http
2. Node is great at HTTP var http = require('http'); http.createServer(function (req, res) { res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}); res.end('Hello World\n'); }).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1');
3. What else can node do well? • WebSockets • TCP (socket) • UDP (socket) • Driver Communication • Incoming Streams via all of the above The event loop is great for handling any connection type, not just HTTP (just don’t block the CPU).
4. What are we going to do? Lets turn this light on and off… … via telnet … via websockets … via twitter … via the temperature in the room … via joysticks This talk will be a quick survey of some of using node.js for things other than HTTP
5. {{ BioPage }} @evantahler evantahler.com • Director of Technology @ TaskRabbit • Creator of the actionhero.js framework We are hiring! Talk to me later!
6. When we last saw our hero... www.actionherojs.com actionhero.js is a multi-transport API Server with integrated cluster capabilities and delayed tasks.
8. 0: Lights
9. 0) How do we talk to this light?
10. 0) How do we talk to this light?
11. DMX is pretty cool • DMX is EASY It was the 1980’s... 1. send null (0v) 2. send a buffer of integer values (8 bits) 3. sleep 20ms. 4. goto 1
12. Unix is pretty cool • Everything is a file! ◦ COM port -> /dev/usb.. var ftdi = require('ftdi');
13. 0) How do we talk to DMX? var ftdi = require('ftdi'); ... ftdi.find(function(err, devices){ api.dmx.device = new ftdi.FtdiDevice(devices[0]); api.dmx.device.on('error', function(e){ … }); api.dmx.device.open(api.config.dmx, function(){ … }); }) ... api.dmx.universe = Buffer(513); setInterval(function(){ api.dmx.device.write(api.dmx.universe); }, 20); Demo Time!
14. 0) A DMX action actionhero generateAction --name=dmx … exports.action = { name: 'dmx', description: 'dmx', ... inputs: {required: ['channel', 'power'], optional: []}, run: function(api, connection, next){ var channel = parseInt(connection.params.channel); var power = parseInt(connection.params.power); try{ api.dmx.set(channel, power); }catch(err){ connection.error = err; } next(connection, true); } }; Demo Time!
15. 1: Telnet
16. 1) How do we talk to Telnet? server.server = net.createServer(...); … > telnet localhost 5000 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. {"welcome":"Hello! Welcome to the actionhero api","room":"defaultRoom","context":"api"} > detailsView {"status":"OK","context":"response","data":{"id":"2d68c389-521d-4dc6-b4f1-8292cd6cbde6","remoteIP":"127.0.0.1","remotePort": 57393,"params":{},"connectedAt":1368918901456,"room":"defaultRoom","totalActions":0,"pendingActions":0},"messageCount":1} > randomNumber {"randomNumber":0.4977603426668793,"context":"response","messageCount":2} Demo Time!
17. 1) How do we talk to Telnet? Telnet API Considerations: • Simultaneous Actions / Parallelism for a single connection • Line Terminators • Data Transports
18. 2: Websockets
19. 2) How do we talk to websockets? • The same design considerations apply as telnet! ◦ … and now you need to worry about fall-back protocols and http handshakes
20. 2) How do we talk to websockets? client = new ActionheroClient; client.on('connected', function(){ console.log('connected!') }) client.on('disconnected', function(){ console.log('disconnected :(') }) client.on('alert', function(message){ alert(message) }) client.on('api', function(message){ alert(message) }) client.on('welcome', function(message){ appendMessage(message); }) client.on('say', function(message){ appendMessage(message); }) client.connect(function(err, details){ if(err){ console.log(err); }else{ client.action('someAction', {key: 'k', value: 'v'}, function(error data){ // do stuff }); } }); Demo Time!
21. 3: Twitter
22. 3) How do we Twitter? • Servers vs. Connections, a philosophical aside. ◦ We could write another initializer for twitter, and handle the data as it streams in. ◦ But isn’t each tweet kind of like a connection? ▪ data, client_id, message…
23. 3) How do we Twitter? actionhero generateServer \ --name=twitter
24. 3) How do we Twitter? server.addTweet = function(tweet){ var twitterUser; try{ twitterUser = tweet.user.screen_name; }catch(e){ var twitterUser = "unknown"; } server.buildConnection({ id: tweet.id, rawConnection : { hashtag: api.config.servers.twitter.hashtag, clientId: tweet.id, message: tweet.text, twitterUser: twitterUser, }, remoteAddress : 0, remotePort : 0 , }); // will emit "connection" Demo Time!
25. All together now... [[ I just used twitter to control the #nodelights ]]
26. <blink> Thanks! </blink>
27. References Me: http://evantahler.com Actionhero: http://actionherojs.com • Docs: http://actionherojs.com/docs/ About DMX: http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/DMX Hardware: • Dimmer Pack: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FVZUMM/ • DMX Driver: http://www.enttec.com/index.php?main_menu=Products&pn=70303 This Project: https://github.com/evantahler/node_for_not_http