node_js_and_rails-michael_bleigh.org

Node.js and Rails

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/mbleigh/nodejs-and-ruby

Presenter

Michael Bleigh Intridia @mbleigh http://mbleigh.com/

What is Node.js?

Evented IO for JavaScript Wins on the client and the server

Where does Node.js shine?

It’s great at concurrency Asynchronous everything (no waiting for input/output or a request to complete) Everything is evented

bit.ly/nodejs-fstream

JavaScript is great for this, because it provides closures, anonymous functions, asychronous processes

You can use the same set of functionality on the server and client side, and share code libraries in both environments

Ruby?

Rapid dev Rapid testing (don’t switch from Ruby to Node)

When to Node

Real-Time (web) applications

Why Real-Time

Better on the server, no responding to thousands of requests Better for the user, updates are fast because they are always connected More buzzwords!

Functions can be hooked to socket events

WebSockets

send messages back and forth between client and server without request/response cycles

web-socket-js on github (flash based socket for browsers that don’t support WebSockets.)

Why JS for WebSocket server?

Client code is already JS You have to write the browser code in JS, if the server is also JS then they are the same language, and the server is just an extension of that. More opportunities for sharing code.

It’s a young tool

4 or 5 competing libraries

How to ACTUALLY use it

Use Redis as the bridge: it’s fast, awesome, key-value store, memcached on steroids, has data structures; lists, sets, publish/subscribe support… it’s like a swiss army knife for your application.

See the example slides

Ephemeral Peer-to-Peer

Chat applications, message passing, no need to persist chats.

Tip of the iceberg

Node is new Growing fast Asynchronous programming means thinking differently about your applications processes (avoid the ‘nested callback mess’) Find resources about doing evented programming

howtonode.org

Node for Ruby?

EventMachine; evented Ruby programmming Thin (there is an asynchronous version) Not QUITE as fast as Node.js Cramp; built on EventMachine

Use what feels right.

Questions?

http://rfw.posterous.com/how-nodejs-saved-my-web-application

How does it compare to comet?

comet == long polling, last-gen version of the problem that WebSockets solves (WebSocket negates reliance on timeout request hacks)

Testing Frameworks?

JSpec

Problems with MySQL due to the blocking issue

There are libs that will help address this MySQL is based on blocking