Building real-time systems on top of Drupal with Node.js

My presentation from Drupalhagen 2012.

Transcript

1. Building real-time systems on top of
   Drupal with Node.js
   Mikkel Høgh / abl.is
   Ablis
   ≫
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2. There will be code on the following slides.
   A fair warning
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3. mandag den 29. oktober 12
   

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4. • For some use cases, some or all of the
   following is True:
   • Drupal is slow
   • PHP doesn’t scale
   • PHP was never designed for this
   • Isomorphic code
   Why?
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5. • Hardly controversial
   Drupal is slow
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6. • Synchronous
   • Single threaded
   • Shared nothing
   PHP doesn’t scale
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7. • Resource hogging
   • Worst of both worlds
   Synchronous/single
   threaded
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8. Four-lane highway
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9. Running PHP code
   Waiting for the database to respond
   Waiting for external web services
   Where synchronous
   hurts
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10. On any given Monday, we will
    have ~150 Apache processes
    running, spending ~15 GB of RAM.
    Real-world example
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11. • Your server acting as it had absolute
    dementia
    • Works well for old school web pages
    • Not really good for modern web
    applications
    Shared nothing
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12. • Websockets
    • Realtime
    • Streaming
    • etc.
    • PHP is 17 years old – semantically tied to
    HTTP anno MCMXCV.
    PHP was never designed for this
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13. Meet node.js
    1  var  http  =  require(‘http’);
    2  http.createServer(function  (req,  res)  {
    3    res.writeHead(200,  {‘Content-­‐Type’:  ‘text/plain’});
    4    res.end(‘Hello  World\n’);
    5  }).listen(1337,  ‘127.0.0.1’);
    6  console.log(‘Server  running  at  http://127.0.0.1:1337/’);
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14. What?
    • Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's
    JavaScript runtime for easily building
    fast, scalable network applications.
    • Node.js uses an event-driven, non-
    blocking I/O model that makes it
    lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-
    intensive real-time applications that run
    across distributed devices.
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15. What?!
    • Tool for building fast network services
    • Uses the same JavaScript engine as
    Google Chrome (V8)
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16. • The ultimate DRY for web developers
    • Share business logic between client and
    server
    • No more having to implement validation
    twice
    Isomorphic code
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17. Speed, speed, speed
    Benchmarks are meaningless, but…
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18. Easily 10x faster than
    PHP/nginx
    (for what we use it for, anyways)
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19. Simple AJAX
    responses in ~50 ms.
    Includes HTTPS, database queries, etc.
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20. Stateful server
    • Everything is so much easier (just stick it
    in an array)
    • Everything is so much harder (what’s
    going on here, who moved my cheese?)
    • No database roundtrips (fast)
    • No persistence (ouch)
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21. • Database-level integration
    • Simple REST
    • RPC
    • Shared state via Redis
    How?
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22. Have the Node.js instance be completely separate
    from Drupal.
    Simple REST
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23. • npm install drupal
     1  /**
     2    *  Validate  that  the  user  sesion  is  valid  and  matches  the  
    uid  provided.
     3    */
     4  function  validate_session(uid,  sid,  callback)  {
     5      //  Validate  the  user's  session.
     6      drupal.user.session_load(sid,  function  (err,  session)  {
     7          //  Load  the  user  object  from  Drupal.
     8          drupal.user.load(uid,  function  (err,  user)  {
     9              drupal.user.role_permissions(user.roles,  function  
    (perms)  {
    10                  user.permissions  =  perms;
    11                  callback(null,  user);
    12              });
    13          });
    14      });
    15  }
    Database-level integration
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24. Demo
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25. • DNode on both ends
    RPC
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26.  1  var  dnode  =  require('dnode');
     2  var  net  =  require('net');
     3  
     4  var  server  =  net.createServer(function  (c)  {
     5      var  d  =  dnode({
     6          transform  :  function  (s,  cb)  {
     7              cb(s.replace(/[aeiou]{2,}/,  'oo').toUpperCase())
     8          }
     9      });
    10      c.pipe(d).pipe(c);
    11  });
    12  
    13  server.listen(5004);
    Node.js
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27. 1  2  require_once  "dnode-­‐php-­‐sync-­‐client/DnodeSyncClient.php";
    3  $dnode  =  new  \DnodeSyncClient\Dnode();
    4  $connection  =  $dnode-­‐>connect('localhost',  5004);
    5  $response  =  $connection-­‐>call('echo',  array('Hello,  world!'));
    6  //  Returns  'Hooloo  woorld!'
    PHP
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28. • dnode in other languages
    • Flotype Bridge
    • xmlrpc
    Other
    implementations
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29. Benefits
    • Response time
    • Concurrency
    • Server-side state in memory
    • JavaScript everywhere
    • Speed
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30. https://abl.is/
    Expect us.
    Ablis
    ≫
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