Drupal as a Data Purveyor, Part II

ASTONISH DESIGN
C H A N G E G A M E astonishdesign.com@astonishdesign #ddtx13
Drupal as
a Data Purveyor
Layering Drupal with emerging technologies to create a
performant, scalable data purveyor.

ASTONISH DESIGN
ASTONISH DESIGN
C H A N G E G A M E
Diana Montalion Dupuis
@dianadupuis
Sam Heuck
@samheuck
Andrew Elster
@ﬁlmknurd

ASTONISH DESIGN
ASTONISH DESIGN
C H A N G E G A M E
We have a new website: astonishdesign.com
@Astonish_Design

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An open-source content management PHP/MySQL framework designed
for rapid development of content-rich web applications.

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Reasons (among many)
• Growth: evolving tool
• Foundation skill set
• User features

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http://jdhancock.com/ • JD Hancock• http://farm9.staticﬂickr.com/8322/8031897271_9c63e48a29_b.jpg

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“Big” Data
"Big" in relation to the amount
of content Drupal is designed
to manage

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Volume

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Velocity
BIKE WALLS• http://www.bikewalls.com

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Variety

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Content
•Every kind of data
•Coming from everywhere

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Current Issues
•Bootstrapping
•Bottlenecks - Normalized - Join Happy
•Lack of solution architecture

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Views
Rapid
Development
Platform
Visitors
& Content
Authors
Miners
Who is the user?

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Welcome to the future
When modularizing the architecture creates performant applications for
all content and all users.

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Traditional Optimizations

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Duplicate
Data
Rapid
Development
Platform
API
Denormalized
Document Storage for READS
Normalized
Relational for WRITES
Data Mining
Content & Data
Creation

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Cost of Bootstrap
• Hooks allow modules to
customize behavior
• Drupal calls hooks during each
stage of bootstrap
• More modules, more hooks
called, slower bootstrap

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Massive Callstacks

ASTONISH DESIGN
Bootstrap on Every Request

ASTONISH DESIGN
Views
Rapid
Development
Platform
Visitors
& Content
Authors
Miners
Backbone.js
Twisted
JS
Photon
Vert.x
Celluloid::IO
PYTHON
PHP
JAVA
RUBY

ASTONISH DESIGN
Views
Rapid
Development
Platform
Visitors
& Content
Authors
Miners
Backbone.js
Twisted
JS
Photon
Vert.x
Celluloid::IO
PYTHON
PHP
JAVA
RUBY
Sources

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API and Node.JS

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Why Proxy External Sources?
OK
your.domai
GET
OK
other.domain
OPTION
Yes
GET

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RESTful
RobertTadlock • http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/rtadlock/2716877199/
http://apigee.com/about/api-best-practices Since you are building the API, you
can make it any way you want, but
following some good basic REST
conventions is a good idea.

It will make it easier to integrate
with front end frameworks.

ASTONISH DESIGN
Pick a Framework
Express or Restify
•http://expressjs.com
•http://mcavage.github.com/node-restify

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Pick a Connector
Tony Hisgett • http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hisgett/
http://mongoosejs.com/
Mongoose
Alternatives
•Mongolia
•Mongo Skin
•Native MongoDB Driver

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Example
Express & Mongoose

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Create a Resource

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Create an Endpoint
http://domain/resources
{ [
{
“someField”: “blah blah blah”
“anotherField”: 2
}
...
] }

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On the Front-end

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Isn’t JS Slow?
Yes but....

1. JS and devices continue to improve

2. We've improved the overall round
trip: faster data, smaller payload, no
bootstrap. It's still faster overall.

ASTONISH DESIGN
Organize Your Code
On the front-end, you could write everything
as AJAX calls and jQuery DOM manipulation,
but that will get messy very quickly as your
application grows in sophistication.

In the interests of maintainability and sanity,
use a framework that organizes your code and
abstracts away the DOM. There are many to
choose from. A new one probably came out
this morning.

ASTONISH DESIGN
We use Ember because it is straightforward
to use, powerful, ﬂexible, and still fairly light
weight. Backbone has been around for a
while and is quite nice, but we like how
Ember handles garbage collection and the
other goodies it ships with.
What Why How
http://www.emberjs.com Why Discourse Uses Ember •Ofﬁcial Guides
•Resources
•Fire Up Ember
•Ember Camp
•DarthdeusV. Ember
•

ASTONISH DESIGN
Results from
Rich Snippets
For Algebraix, all the data comes from an
external source, so it makes sense to run the
application on the client side, as opposed to
importing the data into Drupal ﬁrst.

It also makes the control panel feel more
responsive. No more click and hope while
waiting for the interface to receive data. Now
we've created a conversation with the user.

ASTONISH DESIGN

ASTONISH DESIGN
Essential question ...
Why use Drupal?
Don’t use Drupal if you don’t need it.

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The role of the themer
Front engineer

ASTONISH DESIGN
Questions?

Drupal as a Data Purveyor, Part II

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Drupal as a Data Purveyor, Part II