Using Node.js we build JavaScript and CSS assets on the fly. In the browser we press F5 to trigger the build. No watchers needed.

1. Building assets on the fly using
node (no watcher)
JS-Montreal
Martin Drapeau
2012-08-14

2. About Acquisio
• Automate web advertising
• The leading platform to buy, track,
manage, optimize and report on Buy
media across all major Search,
Social and Display networks.
Report Track
SEARCH
• Benefits SOCIAL
• Increase Efficiency DISPLAY
• Uncover New Business Opportunities
• Serve Clients Better
Optimize Manage
• Serve More Clients
• Mitigate Risk
Visit www.acquisio.com for more info.

3. Current Front-End Technology Stack
• Flex (ActionScript)
• EOL by Adobe
• Front-End Heavy
• Client is +10MB (to be downloaded
every time by customers)
• Client contains a lot of business
logic – heavy processing. A lot
should be moved to the Back-End.
Need to change architecture!

4. Next Gen Front-End Technology Stack
Javascript Front-End
- MVC architecture - Backbone JS & Underscore JS
- Presentation logic - Twitter Bootstrap + Foundation Efficient Development
- Stylus for CSS (preprocessor) - Zero compilation
- Kendo UI for data-grid and other - Dev in the browser
widgets - Re-use what’s out
there
Apache/PHP Node JS Serving
Private API
- Build and deployment Technologies
- Serve JS/CSS assets
- JS dependency management
- Dynamic generation of HTML
- Compilation of JS and CSS
- Harness for different
- Test harness (unit,
environments (i.e. dev vs. prod)
functional and integration)
No communication
between PHP and Java
Java Service Layer
API & Business logic & Interface to Back-End “Middleware”
JBoss, JAX-RS (Jersey), JAXB (JSON)

5. Development in the browser
• Objective
• Make it easy to develop in the browser
• F5 must be the ONLY way to build
• How to do it
• Harness PHP to manage assets on the fly
• Technology tools
• Node.js – Driver our build scripts with JS!
• Snockets – Manage JS dependencies, concat and minify
• Stylus – CSS preprocessor

6. Managing JavaScript Assets
Snockets
• A JavaScript/CoffeeScript concatenation tool for Node.js
inspired from Sprockets .
• We use it to manage dependencies and compile (concat and
minify) production JS assets.
How to use (script-side)
• Declare dependencies directly in your JS files
//= require jquery.js
or
//= require_tree common

7. Managing JavaScript Assets
How to use (Node-side)
• Construct dependency chain
var file = ‘my_file.js’;
var dependencies = [];
snockets.scan(file, {sync:1}, function(err, depGraph) {
dependencies = depGraph.getChain(file);
});
• Concatenate and minify (compilation)
var file = ‘my_file.js’;
snockets.getConcatenation(file, {minify:1, sync:1},
function (err, js) {
fs.writeFileSync(‘my_file.min.js’, js, 'utf8');});
});

8. Managing CSS Assets
Stylus
• CSS preprocessor Expressive, dynamic, robust CSS
How to compile
• Use the Node.js stylus module.
var file = ‘my_file.styl’;
styl = fs.readFileSync(file, 'utf8').replace(/r/g, '');
style = stylus(styl)
.set('compress', true)
.set('include css', true);
style.render(function (err, css) {
fs.writeFileSync('.css', css, 'utf8');
});

9. PHP – Load JS assets
• Either load single minified JS file, or multiple JS files running
Node.js to retrieve dependency chain
function js($module) {
if (USE_COMPILED_JS) {
$this->view('script_include', array(
'url' => WEB_ROOT."/javascripts/$module.min.js",
'content_type' => 'text/javascript',
'version' => VERSION
));
} else {
$assets = $this->getAssetsForJsModule($module);
foreach ($assets as $asset)
$this->view('script_include', $asset);
}
}

10. PHP – Load JS assets
• Run Node.js
$chain_script = realpath(FCPATH.'../bin/js_chain.js');
$cmd = 'node "'.$chain_script.'" '.$module;
exec($cmd, $result);
$chains = json_decode($result[0], TRUE);
• Create SCRIPT tags
<script type="<?=$type?>" src="<?=$url?>"></script>

11. PHP – Load CSS assets
• If CSS files do not exist, or are stale – run Node.js to create
them from Stylus files
$stylus_script = realpath(FCPATH.'../bin/css_compile.js');
$cmd = 'node "'.$stylus_script.'" --compress=true '.$module;
exec($cmd, $result);

12. Performance in Development Environment
• JS Assets
• 0.5 seconds to chain 70 dependencies (608KB raw JS)*
• CSS Assets
• 1.7 seconds to compile 133 Stylus files (2.8MB) into 2 CSS files
• Time to Load page in Chrome
With CSS Compilation
92 requests ❘ 5.24MB transferred ❘ 5.75s (onload: 4.46s, DOMContentLoaded: 4.44s)
With no CSS Compilation
92 requests ❘ 5.24MB transferred ❘ 3.93s (onload: 2.57s, DOMContentLoaded: 2.55s)
*Exculding 3rd party libraries jQuery and KendoUI

13. Other work in progress
• Automate builds with JavaScript thanks to Node.js!
• Deployment to different environments
• QA, Staging, Pre-production and Production
• Automate running QA tests suites
• Run QA unit, functional and integration tests
• Use Zombie browser

14. Questions?