http://qconlondon.com/london-2014/presentation/How%20Elasticsearch%20Powers%20the%20Guardian's%20Newsroom: theguardian.com is one of the world's most popular news websites, visited by over 80 million unique browsers every month. Yet in the past, their journalists and editors found it difficult to get meaningful, timely data on what people were reading. In response to these issues, Graham and colleagues at the Guardian built "ophan", an in-house real-time analytics system based on Elasticsearch. By working closely with journalists and editors, they've focused on what they can action to provide a better experience for the Guardian's existing readers and enable more people discover their unique content. In this talk, Graham will dive into the details of ophan - obstacles faced by the newsroom that prompted them to build the system, how it works for alerting and how the tool has made the Guardian's readers - and staffers - lives better. While Graham explores this real world use case, Shay will cover the technical underpinnings of ophan with a deep dive into the Elasticsearch features and functionality that power the ophan system. Attendees will leave with a solid understanding of Elasticsearch's features and architecture, all gained through the lens of a real-world and hyperlocal use case.

1. How Elasticsearch powers
the Guardian’s newsroom
graham tackley ■ @tackers
director of architecture
guardian news and media
shay banon ■ @kimchy
creator, co-founder and cto
elasticsearch

4. “created in 1936 ... to secure the financial
and editorial independence of
the Guardian in perpetuity”

6. our in-house real-time traffic tool

8. my desktop
workstation
production
apaches
something
htmly ?

9. ssh $SERVER "nice tail -f /apache2/logs/guardian-access_log"

10. my desktop
workstation
2 x production
apaches
publisher
ssh “tail”
zeromq
x
SEO
dashboard

14. my desktop
workstationx

15. Javascript in browser
SNS
SQS
hidden pixel
Dashboard
Tracker

18. Javascript in browser
Tracker
SNS
SQS
hidden pixel
SQS
Dashboard
Serf
elasticsearch
Dashboard

20. 12 * m3.xlarge
in an autoscaling group
(with manual scaling)
instance store (SSD)
https://github.com/guardian/status-app

22. {
"dt": "2014-03-03T02:01:48.026Z",
"url": "http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/03/oscars-2014-winners-list",
"queryString": "",
"host": "www.theguardian.com",
"path": "/film/2014/mar/03/oscars-2014-winners-list",
"section": "film",
"platform": "r2",
"userAgent": {
"type": "Browser",
"family": "Safari 5.1.9",
"os": "OS X 10.6.8",
"device": "Personal computer"
},
"documentReferrer": "http://www.theguardian.com/world",
"browser": {
"id": "gA6RUFLhWNQvWdt0rW4r78Fg",
"isNew": false
},
"referringHost": "theguardian.com",
"referringPath": "/world",
"isContent": true,
"contentPublicationDate": "2014-03-03",
"countryCode": "US",
"countryName": "United States",
"location": {
"lonlat": [-73.4409, 41.2094]
}
}
⇠filter
⇠filter
⇠count per minute

23. {
"query" : {
"filtered" : {
"query" : { "match_all" : { } },
"filter" : {
"term" : { "path" : "/film/2014/mar/03/oscars-2014-winners-list" }
}
}
},
…

24. …
"facets": {
"Reddit": {
"date_histogram": { "field": "dt", "interval": "1m" },
"facet_filter": { "term": { "referringHost": "reddit.com" } }
},
"Facebook": {
"date_histogram": { "field": "dt", "interval": "1m" },
"facet_filter": { "term": { "referringHost": "facebook.com" } }
},
"Google": {
"date_histogram": { "field": "dt", "interval": "1m" },
"facet_filter": {
"or": {
"filters": [
{ "prefix": { "referringHost": "www.google." } },
{ "prefix": { "referringHost": "news.google." } }
]
}
}
}
}
}

26. /graph/breakdown?section=commentisfree

27. ?section=commentisfree
ophan.StandardFilters
ophan.StandardFiltersToElasticsearch
org.elasticsearch.index.
query.FilterBuilder

28. {
"query" : {
"filtered" : {
"query" : { "match_all" : { } },
"filter" : {
"term" : { "path" : "/film/2014/mar/03/oscars-2014-winners-list" }
}
}
},
…

29. "filter": {
"and": {
"filters": [
{
"range": {
"dt": {
"from": "2014-03-03T00:00:00.000Z",
"to": "2014-03-03T22:30:59.999Z",
"include_lower": true,
"include_upper": false
}
}
},
{
"not": {
"filter": { "term": { "countryCode": "GNM" } }
}
},
{
"not": {
"filter": { "term": { "userAgent.type": "Robot" } }
}
},
{
"filter": { "terms": { "section": [ "commentisfree" ] }}
}
]
}
}

32. thank you
graham tackley ■ @tackers
director of architecture
guardian news and media
shay banon ■ @kimchy
creator, co-founder and cto
elasticsearch