The document summarizes a digital media agency's journey with Node.js, detailing key projects like the Eat Out Dining Card and Sunperks loyalty scheme, showcasing their client base and innovative development strategies. It highlights the robust software architecture, including end-to-end JavaScript usage and comprehensive testing protocols. The agency reports impressive performance metrics and a shift towards Node.js as their preferred web development environment for future projects.

1. Clock Limited
Node.js Showcase
Tour credentials
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2. INTRODUCTION
• Award-winning digital media agency. Clients include:
• BBC
• Channel4
• Stonegate Pub Group
• News International
• Eddie Izzard
• Shortlist Media
• Over 10 years in business.
• Historically a PHP-only house.
• Started experimenting with node.js about a year ago.
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3. Eat Out Dining Card
http://www.eatoutdiningcard.co.uk/
• A service for Times and Sunday Times
subscribers.
• Restaurant search engine.
• Special offers.
• Corresponding back-end CMS.
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4. SunPerks
https://www.sunperks.com/
• Loyalty scheme for The Sun newspaper.
• 10 week long campaign.
• A choice of ~150 items shown in the online
catalogue.
• Tight integration with NewsInt’s infrastructure
and fulfilment agencies via API calls and
exposed API.
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5. SunPerks
https://www.sunperks.com/
• Went live with an empty user base.
• Currently have ~300k registered users.
• Advertised daily in The Sun; TV advertising;
linked from mail-outs across other NewsInt
offerings (e.g. Times+).
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6. Development Strategy
• Both sites developed and hosted in the same
way.
• Tightly project managed to strict sprint
commitments and deadlines.
• Testing before deployments
• Expresso for unit tests.
• Selenium with Soda for acceptance
testing.
• Naturally, strict change control in place after
deployment.
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7. Software Architecture
• End-to-end JavaScript:
• jQuery
• Node.js
• MongoDB
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8. Node Application
Architecture
• Application built on Express framework.
• Heavy use of Async.js for asynchronous flow
control.
• Jade and Stylus.
• Underscore; Formidable; gm; nodemailer.
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9. Clock’s NPM Modules
• Piton-* suite of node modules
• piton-entity
• piton-pipe
• piton-http-utils
• piton-mixin
• piton-simplate
• piton-string-utils
• piton-validity
• Gzippo – zlib connect middleware
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10. Hosting Platform
• Single KVM virtual machine per site.
• Quad-core recent Intel Xeons with 4GB RAM.
• Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS.
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11. Init & Monitoring
• Cluster.js forks a worker per CPU, and
monitors.
• Upstart scripts control site (start, stop, restart).
• Monit monitors and (re)starts node if
necessary.
• Remote Nagios instance also monitors and
alerts via SMS of problems.
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12. Conclusions
• Great performance:
• ~300 req/s, peaking at 400 req/s
• Maximum 100 registrations per minute
• Server load maximum 5.
• Client is extremely happy with the sites.
• Internally, node.js has now become our
preferred environment for web application
development.
• Designers have taken very quickly to Jade and
Stylus, and love using them.
• As effective for developing website as with
PHP even with the additional learning.
• In the future leveraging more of the things
node.js is best at. Real-time apps, etc.
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13. Fin
Thanks for listening!
@mikecronn
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