NODE.CQ

CREATING REAL-TIME DATA MASHUPS WITH

NODE.JS AND ADOBE CQ

Joshua Miller NASCAR Digital Media

jsmiller@nascar.com@jo5h | www.jo5h.com

PROBLEM SCENARIO

We want to mix authored content from Adobe CQ with Real-

Time Race Data from our Timing and Scoring system.

Combining Slowly Changing Dimensions such as Driver

Team Name, Vehicle Manufacturer Name, Track Information,

etc. with Constantly Changing Metrics such as Last Lap

Speed, Driver Position, Lap Number, etc.

Adobe CQ is great at managing the authored content, but is

less adept at handling the real-time data. The time it takes to

ingest the data and replicate it is too long – the data will have

already changed.

ENTER

NODE.JS

THE SOLUTION

NODE.JS AND ADOBE CQ

ARE COMPLIMENTARY

ADOBE CQ

• Enterprise-Scale

CMS

• Excels at Document

Storage

• Great Authoring

Environment

• Replicates and

Scales Nicely

NODE.JS

• Enterprise-Scale

Throughput

• Excels at Real-Time

Data

• Easily Connect

Disparate Systems

• Scales Nicely

COMMON USE-CASES FOR

NODE.JS

• Creating Network-Intensive Applications

• Creating and Consuming Real-Time Data

• Creating Scalable, High-Throughput Solutions for Large

Numbers of Simultaneous Connections

• Creating and Consuming Service-Based API’s

• Creating Stateless, Request-Response Scenarios

• Creating Push Scenarios over Websockets

• Creating Event-Driven Services

WORKING

WITH

NODE.JS

A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO

WORKING WITH NODE.JS

SHOULD BE LIKE WORKING

WITH BUILDING BLOCKS

Node.JS has a broad and diverse developer community. If

you want to build something with Node, chances are

someone else has already done the same thing.

Before you start building from scratch, look at the packages

that already exist on NPM (http://npmjs.org)

Using NPM (Node Package Manager), you can install

packages that perform the tasks you need to accomplish.

ELEMENTS OF A NODE.JS

APPLICATION

Web Server / Framework

• Express

• Flatiron

Logging Service

• Morgan

• Winston

Configuration

• Nconf

• config

Promise Library

• Q

• promise

Built-In Services

• HTTP / HTTPS

• FileSystem

• Crypto

• Events

• Stream

• Etc.

NODE.JS GOTCHAS

Some things about Node.JS are a bit different from working with other technologies.

• NODE.JS IS ASYNCHRONOUSGetting familiar with JavaScript Promises and Deferred Libraries or understanding an developing very clear callback chains is a must for working with Node.JS effectively

• NODE.JS IS A PACKAGE-DRIVEN TECHNOLOGYGetting comfortable working with a Package Manager (NPM) is a must for working with Node.JS effectively

• YOUR APPLICATION IS YOUR SERVERThere is no Apache or nginx or IIS to work with. You build your server, or use a framework like Express or Flatiron

• NODE.JS IS AS FAULT-TOLERANT AS YOU MAKE ITBuilding solid functionality with lots of error handling and good logging is important

WTF DID YOU JUST BUILD?

Node.JS is Package-Driven and NPM provides you with a

wealth of resources for working with Node, but be careful

what packages you choose. If you see a package that has

25,000 downloads and a vibrant development

history on GitHub then you’re probably safe.

If you’re the only one that has downloaded this

package this calendar year and the last commit

was made in 2010, you might want to keep

looking for a more popular package.

Just because you have bricks in your bin,

you don’t have to use them all together.

INTEGRATING

ADOBE CQ

SO WHAT ARE OUR NEXT STEPS?

USING ADOBE CQ’S REST API

WITH NODE.JS

Adobe CQ is built on top of Apache Sling – a Web Framework

that provides a REST API to CRX - the Java Content

Repository that sits beneath Adobe CQ

You can directly query CRX using simple REST commands

and have the output formatted as JSON

JSON data can be directly consumed by the Node.JS

application independent of your website’s front-end

MAKING RESTFUL REQUESTS

TO ADOBE CQ CONTENT

It’s simple enough to extract content using the RESTful API in Adobe CQ. Take for example Race Data stored at the path:

/content/nascar/lookups/events/sprint-cup-series/2014/

You can easily view this data using the following URL:

http://10.196.135.9:4503/content/nascar/lookups/events/sprint-cup-series/2014.infinity.json

Note the “infinity” selector in the URL – this can be replaced with a number indicating the node-depth from which you wish to return data

http://10.196.135.9:4503/content/nascar/lookups/events/sprint-cup-series/2014.2.json

USING THE NODE-DEPTH

SELECTOR WITH ADOBE CQ

USING THE INFINITY

NODE-DEPTH SELECTOR

USING A NUMERIC NODE-

DEPTH SELECTOR

Returns either all child

nodes at the given path,

or an array of the

available numeric node-

depth selectors if the

structure is deemed too

large.

Returns data from the root

path, and all child nodes

at the node-depth

indicated by the selector.

NODE-DEPTH SELECTOR

RESULTS

ARRAY OF AVAILABLE NODE-DEPTH SELECTORS

JSON OUTPUT OF THE AVAILABLE NODES

HOW DO WE

USE THE DATA

WITH NODE.JS?

NOW THAT WE HAVE THIS DATA

HOW DO WE USE THIS

DATA?

By itself, the data that comes from CQ is only as useful as

the underlying data structure, the power of this data comes

in our ability to use Node.JS to quickly extract the data and

then mash it up with other data sources.

Using Node.JS, not only can we query data from CRX, we can

query data from a number of sources and combine our CRX

data with other feeds to create new data sources.

This enables us to mix authored content from CRX with Real-

Time data from our Timing and Scoring feed to create a new,

single feed that can be used in our Mobile product.

HOW IS THE DATA JOINED

INTO A NEW DATA SOURCE?

Creating the feed mashup is not out-of-the-box functionality

for Node.JS – we have to custom-code a method by which to

join feeds together

Node.JS enables us to build an application using the building

blocks we discussed earlier, but also allows us to create new,

custom blocks with which to build

Without too much effort, we have created a package that

allows feeds to be joined together using the same Primary

and Foreign Key relationships you would find in a typical

RDBMS product.

HOW IS THE DATA JOINED

INTO ONE FEED?

• Using simple JSON syntax, we can define a new feed that is comprised of one or more feeds.

• Each feed has a “join” condition that allows a the feed to be joined to the collection based on a specific JSON node value.

• Special syntax allows for variable replacement from URL parameters

• Special syntax allows for values from the new feed to be used throughout the feed

• Includes custom functions such as Date and String Formatting

• Includes dependency conditions where field values are calculated and/or displayed based on the value of other fields

INTEGRATING

REAL-TIME

DATA

TAKING IT ONE STEP FURTHER

GETTING LIVE DATA FROM

THE RACETRACK

During a race, NASCAR vehicles are monitored via transponders placed in the cars. As the cars cross over fiber optic sensors in the track, the data is transmitted to a piece of software called TimeGear.

TimeGear tracks the speed of each car, its position relative to the other race cars and feeds this data into the Timing and Scoring system.

Timing and Scoring provides a feed that is consumed by Apex, our Mobile Cacher application, which streams the JSON feed out to Akamai where the data is consumed by internal applications and third-parties such as Yahoo!, Fox Sports and ESPN.

INTEGRATING OUR REAL-

TIME DATA FEED

Using the same syntax and the same data providers, we can query our Real-Time race data directly from Timing and Scoring, or directly from Akamai to reduce the load on the T&S systems.

Without modifying any code, provided a relationship can be found in the data, we can now merge any JSON data source into our feed.

This allows us to merge our Real-Time race statistics right into our authored CQ content, providing a richer and more in-depth feed for our Mobile application without the delay of first ingesting the race data into Adobe CQ.

Now that our data is available in a new format, we can provide a single stream of data to the NASCAR Mobile application, reducing the number of calls that need to be made from a mobile device.

EXTENDING OUR DATASET

WITH THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

Given the flexibility of this data aggregator, we can now start to lay new and powerful data layers from disparate source on top of our existing data without having to store that data in CQ.

For example, we can pull Real-Time Weather Conditions into our data based on the zip code of the track. We could pull track records to note if a driver’s lap speed was the fastest in the track’s history. We could even pull in Sponsor information based on the current Race Leader.

We accomplish all of this without the need to add to the storage requirements of our application, or write custom aggregators for external content.

WHAT ARE THE

BENEFITS OF

USING

NODE.JS?

NOW THAT WE’RE DONE

COULDN’T WE HAVE DONE

THIS USING CQ?

Of course, we could have accomplished the same end-result

using only Adobe CQ and some custom Java code. There are

some real benefits to using Node.JS in this scenario though:

• There is no code to compile and new feeds only require

JSON configuration

• Node.JS is an extremely high-throughput platform. We can

serve hundreds of simultaneous connections per second.

• We reduce the load on our CQ environment by offloading

tasks to an application with fewer hardware requirements

• We don’t use an large, complex web framework to deliver

small streams of data with no user interface requirements

IS NODE.JS REALLY THAT

MUCH MORE PERFORMANT?

We have used Node.JS for a number of new tasks here at NASCAR Digital Media lately and have found it to be incredibly performant. We recently launched a new RaaSimplementation with Gigya and use Node.JS to authenticate users.

During our load tests, we found that we could serve in 10 minutes of sustained load, all of the traffic that we expected the Node service to experience within the entire race season.

In fact, we have found that our load tests typically max-out not because of Node’s inability to serve more requests, but because MySQL starts to queue requests, or Gigya begins to throttle requests-per-second.

WHERE CAN I

LEARN MORE?

OK, I’M INTRIGUED …

RELATED RESOURCES

• Node.JShttp://nodejs.org/

• NPMhttps://www.npmjs.org/

• Adobe CQhttp://www.adobe.com/solutions/web-experience-management.html

• Apache Slinghttp://sling.apache.org

• Apache Jackrabbithttp://jackrabbit.apache.org/

LEARNING NODE.JS

• Node.JS the Right Way (Book)

http://amzn.to/1wmI4hL

• NodeSchool (Tutorial)

http://nodeschool.io/

• Express Framework (Documentation)

http://expressjs.com/starter/hello-world.html

• JavaScript Promises (Article)

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/es6/pr

omises/

NODE.CQ

CREATING REAL-TIME DATA MASHUPS WITH

NODE.JS AND ADOBE CQ

Joshua Miller NASCAR Digital Media

jsmiller@nascar.com@jo5h | www.jo5h.com