In the Beginning

• 3-week sprint
• Complex inter-dependency
• 2-day release cycle culminated in 4-hour, "after-hours" deploy & validation
• Apache Tiles and POM for dependency management plus Maven for releases

So, why change?

From Back to Front

• Java/JSTL development was slow
• Dependency tree was unmappable
• Developer blueprint was not available

Defining Success

• Small, collaborative team
• No negative impact on customer interface
• Predictable outcome from distribution of work (read: The Ember Way)
• Increased Product Velocity
• Decreased Team-Dependency-Roadblock
• Full Continuous Integration (all the way to prod!)

Developer Success

• Upgrade path
• Community Involvement
• Product (planning) Contribution / Ownership

Rocky Road

• Started with Ember 0.8
• Ember Data from the start (for better or worse)
• Initially built custom adapter to use websockets
• Lots of caching issues
• Trying to grow with changes to Ember

Our Stack

• Apache
• Tomcat
• Node.js => Java API
• Ember.js
• Require.js

Code Organization

• Require.js for module management
• Organized by app (plus core app)
• Built into vendor and main modules

Feature Requirements

• Ad support
• Lottery A/B testing
• Feature Flags
• Custom CMS content support

Node in the Middle

• Node.js service layer to consolidate communication with Java API
• Using Socket.io, Sock.js, Engine.io, Express.js for communication with client
• One call for many data points
• Manages authentication requests
• Uses RSVP.js to manage async requests to Java API

Started with Sockets

• Initially started with Socket.io
• Managed session counterpart on server
• Lightweight, FAST, shiny
• Set groundwork for realtime
• Resiliant, auto-reconnection mechanism

Socket Issues Galore

• Sticky loadbalancers, not so sticky
• Many issues with clients on older browsers
• Custom adapter was buggy at times
• Changed from Socket.io to Sock.js to Engine.io, with little improvement

Express Yourself

• Rewrote Node server as an Express.js API
• Ported data enpoint resources to Express.js over a week
• Switched to RESTAdapter
• Had to come up with a new auth scheme (now per request)
• Added support to sideload records, reusing endpoint resources

Onward and Upward

• Started the move to Ember-CLI mid September
• Building first app on CLI, then porting existing apps over
• All future development will be with CLI
• Staying on latest and greatest Ember and Ember Data when we can
• Moving to pods, in hopes of future lazy loading of routes

Learning from our Mistakes

• Taking advantage of initializers, (currentUser, analytics, etc) and using services as often as possible.
• Using Ember Data in more intelligent ways
• Refactoring some controller interfaces into services

Demo