Slides for a talk given at Node on The Road found here: https://www.joyent.com/developers/videos/node-js-on-the-road-nyc-craig-spaeth-brennan-moore. These outline Artsy's (artsy.net) transition from a monolithic Ruby on Rails stack to a distributed system with Node.js powered front ends.

1. Craig Spaeth & Brennan Moore
Artsy Web Engineering
@craigspaeth & @zamiang

2. WHY WE MIGRATED TO NODE
RUBY ON RAILS
RUBY
ON
RAILS
API
BACKBONE UI
IOS PROTOTYPE
BACKBONE UI
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
V
EB
BRO
KE
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
V
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
V
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
T
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
M
O
BIL
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
M
O
BILE
W
EB
BRO
KEN
RUBY
ON
RAILS
ANALYTICS
EMAL
GENERATORS
API
ADMINPANELCODE
IOS APP CMS

3. KEN
EB
BRO
KEN
PROBLEMS WITH BACKBONE + RAILS STACK
• Slow JS testing
• Ruby/JS—lack of re-use
• Hard to understand
hybrid stack
• Huge single page app
• Bloated & slow assets

4. INTRODUCING NODE INTO THE STACK
RUBY API
BACKBONE
FRONT-END
CMS

5. INTRODUCING NODE INTO THE STACK
CMS
RUBY API
BACKBONE
FRONT-END
MOBILE WEB
Redirect mobile User Agents

6. INTRODUCING NODE INTO THE STACK
CMS
RUBY API
MOBILE WEB
DESKTOP WEB

7. Avoiding Death
by Rewrite
Gustavo Rezende
Valquíria, 2009

8. MIGRATING USERS PAGE BY PAGE UNTIL NODE WAS IN FRONT
NEW
NODE APP
LEGACY
RAILS APP
HAPROXY
/browse
/artist/:id
/tag/:id
NEW
NODE APP
HAPROXY
+ LEGACY
RAILS APP
NODE-HTTP-PROXY

9. OUR STACK NOW
RUBY API
NODE TOOLS HOSTING CACHING
NODE SERVER
ASSET CDN

10. MEET EZEL: ARTSY’S JS APP BOILERPLATE
• Philosophy: Modularity, Flexibility, Isomorphic
• Apps: Express sub-apps mounted
• Components: Modules of UI grouping CSS,
templates, and JS together
• Simple re-use, small asset package size,
test everything in Node
• Ezeljs.com

11. PAIN POINTS IN TRANSITION
• Syncing auth
• Tracking memory usage
& leaks
• npmjs.org stability
• Integration testing a
distributed architecture
Patrick Lichty
A Failure in The Interwebz, 2013

12. WINS
Community
• npm for server & client
Productivity
• 1,000+ tests under 5 mins.
• 5 min. deploys, ~5 times a day
Performance
• Page load speed cut in half
• 40+ Rails servers to 2 Node servers
• SEO—Shared rendering server/client
Patrick Lichty
A Failure in The Interwebz, 2013
Loving Parent
Success Baby, circa. 2007

13. Thank you
@craigspaeth
@zamiang
github.com/artsy

14. SAMPLE SETUP.JS

15. DIRECTORY STRUCTURE