An incomplete tour of just a few of the awesome unconventional (for a web stack) things people have built with node.js. Presented at the Colorado Springs Open Source Users Group 2/23/2012

1. node.js
server of many uses
Mike Brevoort
Colorado Springs Open Source Users Group
23 February 2012

2. Mike Brevoort
@mbrevoort
work at...
(though opinions expressed in this presentation are
my own and not meant to represent Pearson)

3. agenda
very brief intro to node.js
a tour of some
“unconventional” uses of
node.js
* though I don’t particularly like the work conventional

4. node.js
An Evented I/O network server
for Javascript
created by sponsored by
Ryan Dahl

5. “Most languages were designed to
solve computational problems, but
Node.js is different.
Node.js was designed from the
ground up to efficiently handle the
communication that is at the heart
of modern web applications.”
http://www.joyentcloud.com/products/smart-appliances/
node-js-smartmachine/

6. generating load

7. Chris Johnson @mast3rof0
“Mozilla uses a single node
thread to simulate 180K users! I
have commercial testing gear that
can't do that! #nodesummit”
- 1/24/2012

8. https://gist.github.com/1861747

10. interprocess RPC

11. DNode async rpc through
sockets/JSON
symmetric remote function calling
between processes
to/from the browser via socket.io
JSON protocol
dnode ports in ruby, java, php,
perl
https://github.com/substack/dnode

12. server client

13. headless testing

14. fast headless simulated
zombie.js
browser testing
emulation

15. fast headless simulated
zombie.js
browser testing
HTML5 parsing and Cookies and Web
dealing with tag Storage
soups
XMLHttpRequest in all
DOM Level 3 its glory
implementation
setTimeout/
HTML5 form fields setInterval
(search, url, etc)
pushState, popstate
CSS3 Selectors with and hashchange events
some extensions
alert, confirm and
prompt

16. headless WebKit with
JavaScript API
Fast and native
NOT node.js
But node is commonly used as an
orchestrator

17. phantomjs-node
“...implements a nauseously
clever bridge between
Phantom and Node”

18. screenshotting

19. screenshot-app web screenshotting
curl http://localhost:3000/cnn.com > cnn.png
https://github.com/visionmedia/screenshot-app

20. webcrawling

23. browser APIs or
fallbacks

24. node-canvas HTML5 server-side canvas
API fallback
run canvas API calls in node, send
an image back to the client
great for some mobile use cases
legacy browser fallback
https://github.com/LearnBoost/node-canvas

25. Deployments

26. Propagit multi-server git deployment
over http
drone repos/somerepo.git
drone repos/somerepo.git
git push http://hubhost:6001/
somerepo master Hub
drone repos/somerepo.git
drone repos/somerepo.git
https://github.com/substack/propagit

27. Propagit multi-server git deployment
over http
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
propagit deploy --hub=hubhost:6000 --secret=beepboop
somerepo ed56c6e85731d412fe22cf437cb63130afc34b07
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
Hub
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
https://github.com/substack/propagit

28. Propagit multi-server git deployment
over http
deploy/
somerepo.ed56c...
drone
propagit spawn --hub=hubhost:6000 --secret=beepboop
somerepo ed56c6e85731d412fe22cf437cb63130afc34b07
-- node server.js 8085
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
Hub
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
deploy/
drone somerepo.ed56c...
https://github.com/substack/propagit

29. load balancing

30. Bouncy programmatic http load
balancer and router
https://github.com/substack/bouncy

31. Bouncy programmatic http load
balancer and router
https://github.com/substack/bouncy

32. network tracing

33. node_pcap libpcap bindings
decode, print and analyze
packets
node makes it very nice since
each packet is emitted as a
Buffer by the EventEmitter
https://github.com/mranney/node_pcap

34. shell scripting

35. shell scripting
fs core library - abstract OS or
shell implementation details
can leverage the node module
ecosystem
great if you need to do I/O beyond
filesystem
npm client

36. fs.watch(filename, [options], listener)

37. Procstreams pipe-able and composable
shell scripting in node
https://github.com/polotek/procstreams

38. tip of the
iceberg
Load generation Browser fallbacks
IPC Deployment
Testing Load balancing
Screenshotting Network tracing
Webcrawling Shell scripting

39. Thanks!
Questions?
Mike Brevoort
@mbrevoort