Components as microservices

SOA in the front-end world

Matteo Figus / @matteofigus

Who am I

Coding, technology, conferences
London, UK
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Dismantling the monolith

SOA from the back-end to the front-end

The monolith

Deployments every 15 days

Not very resilient

Not very robust

Code consistency (one single language)

Dedicated team for infrastructure

Dedicated team for testing

A couple of years later...

Microsites

Microsites

Quick deployments

More (focused and effective) testing

Robustness++

Diversity on tech stacks

Microsites: not a free ride!

    Static resources duplication

    Markup, javascript, css duplication

    Inconsistencies

    Every microsite including ~150K of javascript libraries

    Every microsite including ~50K of css

The common parts

The common parts

Components for common UI elements

$ curl http://components/couk/header?userType=Admin&metroId=72

{
  "html": "<div><img src=\"//components.opentable.com/logo.jpg\" />...</div>",
  ...
}
  • REST interface
  • HTML output
  • Headers and parameters to get different variants
  • Ability to handle server-side logic
  • Ability to host static resources

Components for shared CSS/JS libraries

$ curl http://components/jp/css

{
  "html": "<link src=\"//components.opentable.com/css-bundle-jp.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" />",
  ...
}

$ curl http://components/com/js

{
  "html": "<script src=\"//components.opentable.com/js-bundle-com.js\"></script>",
  ...
}

What about...

  • Client-side rendering?
  • IFrames?
  • Asset compilation during build time?
  • WebComponents?

Microsites + Shared components

Consistency

Coordination

Optimal front-end loading

Easy to spin-up new microsites

A new hard dependency for all the front-end!

Not possible to create or edit components!

OpenComponents

A framework for developing and deploying HTML components

Features

Enables people to create new components independently and publish them

Granular ownership

Performances

Robustness

Serve as framework for experimenting and A/B testing new ideas in the front-end

Consumers have control

How does it work

Demo time!

Getting started

$ npm install -g oc

$ mkdir demo && cd demo
$ oc init test-component jade
$ echo 'div this is my component' > test-component/template.jade

$ oc dev . 3030
$ oc preview http://localhost:3030/test-component

Ship it!

$ oc registry add http://oc-registry.herokuapp.com
$ oc publish /test-component

$ oc preview http://oc-registry.herokuapp.com/test-component

Static resources? Let me handle this!

// template.jade

img(src=staticPath+'img/img.jpg')

// server.js

module.exports.data = function(context, cb){
  cb(null, {
    staticPath: context.staticPath
  });
};

Client-side rendering

<html>
  <body>
    ...
    <oc-component href="http://oc-registry.com/component/1.X.X/?a=b">
    </oc-component>
    ...
    <script src="http://oc-registry.com/oc-client/client.js">
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Server-side rendering with node.js

npm install oc-client --save

var Client = require('oc-client'),
    client = new Client();

client.config = {
  registries: ['http://oc-registry.com/'],
  components: {'hello-world': '~1.0.0'}
};

client.renderComponent('hello-world', function(err, componentHtml){
  console.log(componentHtml); // => rendered html
});

Server-side rendered components

$ curl http://oc-registry.com/hello-world

{
  "href": "https://oc-registry.com/hello-world",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "requestVersion": "",
  "html": "<div>hello John Doe</div>",
  "type": "oc-component",
  "renderMode": "rendered"
}

Server-side pre-rendered components

$ curl http://oc-registry.com/hello-world 
-H Accept:application/vnd.oc.prerendered+json
{
  "href": "https://oc-registry.com/hello-world",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "requestVersion": "",
  "data": {
    "name": "John doe"
  },
  "template": {
    "src": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/your-s3-bucket/components/hello-world/1.0.0/template.js",
    "type": "handlebars",
    "key": "cad2a9671257d5033d2abfd739b1660993021d02"
  },
  "type": "oc-component",
  "renderMode": "pre-rendered"
}

Conclusions

SOA is not just about code

Test, test, test

Failure is a feature

Componentise all the web!

Thank you

github.com/opentable/oc

bit.ly/opentable-is-hiring


follow me on twitter - @matteofigus

matteofigus.github.io

@matteofigus