Filippo Diotalevi

HttpCheck in node.js

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most useful tools when you develop mobile portals is a simple web page to check the headers your browser is sending to the server. Which User-Agent? Accept-Language? Accept-Encoding? Accept-Charset?

A good opportunity to write a tiny node.js application (with just a bit of Underscore magic).

var http = require('http'), 
    _ = require('./underscore'),
    port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

var FullResponse = function(req) {

  var blanks = "                                   ";
  var fields = {"url": req.url, "method": req.method, "httpVersion": req.httpVersion, 
              "headers": req.headers, "data": ""};  
    
  var format = function(key, value, indent) {    
    if (_.isString(value))
      var valuePart = value+"\n";
    else
      var valuePart = "\n" + _.reduce(_.keys(value), function(sum, it) {  
        return sum + format(it, value[it], indent+1);  }, 
        "");
          
    return blanks.substring(0, indent * 2) + key+": " + valuePart;
  }        
  
  this.addData = function(data) {
    fields["data"] += data.toString("utf8");
  }
  
  this.printOut = function() {        
    return format("response", fields, 0);
  }
  
}

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  var response = new FullResponse(req);  
  req.on("data", function(it) {
    response.addData(it);
  });  
  req.on("end", function() {
    res.end(response.printOut());  
  });  
}).listen(port);
console.log('Server running at port '+port);

Full source code on Github, the application is running at http://httpcheck.herokuapp.com.

Trying node.js

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

After a few months of Rails development, I start to really enjoy working with dynamic languages. Coming from a Java background, it takes some time to get used to work without a proper IDE with code completion and good refactoring tools; however, after a while the development experience becomes more natural, especially if you pair a dynamic language with a schema free database like MongoDB.

I was really curious to try some other (dynamic) way to develop web applications, so I decided to build a website to sell my old furniture, and I picked node.js because... well, a lot of people is talking about it. I understand that's not a sensible reason to choose a technology but hey, I just wanted to sell a few things. Have a look at the result, if you are interested (I still have a good wardrobe for sale, anyway).

At the end of the development, these are my notes/impressions.

Overall development experience
Developing the website has taken me about 12 hours. I estimate I spent roughly 30% of the time to google for information, and 20% to integrate the design. So development is reasonably quick.
Programming a web application in a event-driven fashion (the node.js way) feels a bit weird, but it's not a problem for simple webapps. I can imagine that if you need to write some complicate business logic that might be quite challenging though.

Node.js and Express
Node.js is a low-level framework, so if you want to develop a web application you better use Express. Express is a minimal web framework, similar to Sinatra. It's well documented in the website, and very quick to get started.

Jade
Since the Express documentation states that Jade is Haml successor, I figured that was the right choice. Wrong. For two reasons.
First, jade is basically undocumented. The Github page gives you some hints, but really not enough to write even a simple web application. Pro tip: the source code contains a examples/ folder.
Second reason: jade is very similar to Haml. Except that it is different. It feels similar, but some small details are different, so that (if you happen to work also with Haml like I'm doing) you keep making annoying errors.

MongoDB integration
I used node-mongodb-native and mongoskin to integrate the web application with MongoDB. Documentation here is still very minimal, and you have to figure out things via trial and error. But anyway, every MongoDB driver works basically in the same way.

Deployment on Duostack
One of the reason I chose the Node.js+MongoDB stack is to be able to deploy the application, for free, on Duostack. Duostack is the Heroku for Node.js, with some nice additions like the availability of MySQL, MongoDB and Redis to store your data. And a very reasonable free plan that allows to install your application with a 128MB database.
Duostack works exactly like Heroku; you push your code in production via git, and everything works. The application feels actually a bit slower than some of my applications deployed on Heroku, but I haven't really done any benchmark. It's free! so I can't complain.

In summary
Node.js and Express are enjoyable technologies to use, but really in their infancy. They're also in constant development, and incompatibilities are likely to be introduced in new versions. Their documentation is quite good, but the whole set of frameworks/technologies that you need to use to implement a full web application (templating, authentication, authorisation) is not. So expect to spend a lot of time to google for solutions, and to ask/answer questions in mailing lists and stackoverflow.
Also, I'm not convinced the event-driven approach can cope well with websites with complex business logic; it would help to have some books or at least a best practice collection to refer in this case, but I couldn't find anything.
On the other side, if you need to implement a network server, node.js is certainly worth having a good look.

Week 5

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My bi-weekly update... a few interesting things happened.

Unexpectedly, I started working on my first iPhone/iPad application. That's something I didn't foresee because my objective-C skills are virtually not-existent, but my friends at The Dusseldorf Experiment are helping me out. My goal is to create a mobile application for Trunk.ly, the new bookmarking service I use. The iPhone version is ready (albeit minimal), I hope to be able to start the iPad one this week. And no, I don't want to become an objective-C developer; I already have my problems switching daily between Ruby and Java.

Last weekend I attended the startup weekend in Bruxelles; like my previous experience in Austin I enjoyed the event so much, but this time our team also went on to win the price for the geekiest project. That's a screencast of the demo if you are interested.

Unfortunately I had to miss Fosdem this year; I was planning to go on Sunday, but a bad cold convinced me to stay home.

I read Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling. I have mixed feeling about this book: while it offers a lot of useful suggestions, if you (like me) have already read all the possible books about SEOs, bootstrapping startups, lean startups and outsourcing to Virtual Assistants, this book won't tell you anything more. So, it's a useful summary, but nothing really new.

Usual contracting work going on, nothing new on that side. The three contracts I have are more than enough to keep me very busy right now, so I don't see any news in this area at least until April.

Week 3

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks worth of updates today.

Three consulting gigs ongoing: Ruby on Rails work, an architecture/performance review and finally some work on a OSGi SaaS platform. Definitely busy times!

I started to collect some Ruby and Rails code snippets (and some wiki pages of explanation) at https://github.com/fdiotalevi/rails-dump. Nothing polished, just some code to copy in my next project, or step-by-step tutorials to remember certain solutions. Some things I posted there:

an improved standard layout for Rails projects (the default one is ugly)
a reusable module to create wizard controllers
how to setup Devise using mongoid as ORM (and MongoDB, of course)

For my traditional Sunday project, I decided to write a minimal blog engine in Ruby. I'm definitely sick of the terrible service offered by my current hosting provider (Servage), and have always played with the idea of writing something simple I can customise to my needs.

After getting the final inspiration looking at Toto and Marley, I wrote a minimal Sinatra-based (and Git backed) blog engine in 4 hours last Sunday. Deployed on Heroku, it's a 0-cost solution (because you can deploy it using the free plan), runs on a fast server and it's a completely customisable blog. I need some more time to add a couple of other features (in particular, a RSS feed), but it's already deployed here.

Finally, I started to define my idea for the Bruxelles Startup Weekend. It's one of my many ideas to improve the way people travel... more details in a few days.

Innovation and Large Companies

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I had a few conversations lately about the difficulties of producing innovation in large companies (telco operators, in the specific, but that equally applies to many other businesses).

That reminded an excellent article Robert Scoble wrote a couple of months ago, Why Google can't build Instagram; that is, the main reasons why big companies can't innovate are

they can't afford to release early (minimal) versions of the product and iterate; people expects finished, quality products from big established companies

their products need to scale from day 1; while a startup normally have a few hundred users in its early days, a new product launched (even in beta or labs) by Google immediately has millions of users. Therefore more people or entire teams need to be involved to make sure the new service will properly scale

in big companies there's no complete freedom, even when it comes to technical choices. You are supposed to use one of the approved technologies, for instance; and you aren't suppose to use or integrate with competing services

So what's the solution? Are a vast majority of big companies doomed to fail within ten years for lack of innovation?

Robert proposes three ideas: innovate by acquisition, work on open source projects and keep teams small. I agree with the first proposal, but I think there is actually a better method large corporates can use to innovate.

YCombinator, TechStars, CapitalFactory and other similar programs have demonstrated in the past five years that there's a systematic and repeatable model to create innovation. The rules are simple (but correct execution is, as usual, the most important thing)

select the best aspiring entrepreneurs worldwide

constant mentorship

provide minimal funding to entrepreneurs to create their startups (not to work on your company and your ideas)

help entrepreneurs to manage company financials, funding and growth (but without interfering too much with their business)

What's the budget to create such a program? Less than the money spent in any mid-sized project in any big corporate. You can probably go a long way with 1 million $ (or euros) per year, and roll out a great program for less than two.

Noteworthy links, January 10th 2010

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Many interesting news in the first 10 days of the year..

The Pleasure Principle: Not All Products Need To Be Painkillers How the usual "solve users pain" does not apply to all interesting businesses
In Defence of Copycat Businesses What about copying successful services?
Facebook hype will fade Interesting take on Facebook success
Ten business models that rocked 2010
Funding Lessons from a Successful Kickstarter Campaign Funding Lessons from a Successful Kickstarter Campaign
2011 may mark the beginning of a golden era for entrepreneurs "when it was the darkest, we saw the stars"
The 10 Coolest Kickstarter Projects of 2010 Crowdfunding at its best
10 TED Talks for Entrepreneurs

Week 1

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Week 1 of 2010 has been particularly eventful. It seems like everybody woke up after the Christmas break and decided to contact me!

First of all, I finished reading Metaprogramming Ruby; more than a book, a great experience! I already suggested it to many people, but if you are interested in Ruby, read it by any mean!

A few people suggested me new events to add to my Startup/Tech European events list: now is more complete than ever! Have a look at it and choose your events for the first quarter of 2011.

I've started by Ruby on Rails development contract; I cannot blog much about that, but I'm having a lot of fun improving my Ruby and Rails skills.

I've also reached an agreement for another consulting contract for the first trimester of 2011; it's going to be more a performance and architecture review job than a coding one, but hopefully it will turn out to be interesting.

Finally, I've had some free hours on Sunday to put together a Trunk.ly Ruby client; it is still incomplete and possibly buggy, but it's already on GitHub. Give it a try. Trunk.ly is still a young service, but very promising

In Defense of Copycat Businesses

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Italian Startup Scene group hosted, a few days ago, an interesting thread on copycats (clones of famous websites/services, think of one of the many Groupon clones as an example). Copycat businesses are quite common in Europe, and seem to be particularly well considered by european VCs because they adopt well-known business models; as a matter of fact, the thread on ISS was started by an italian VC analyst.

This thread got me thinking that, when analysing several methods to come up with business ideas, I never considered blatantly copying another website. Entrepreneurs are creative people: what's creative in copying? The whole idea seems like a taboo for many. Good reason to think more about it!

There might actually be nothing creative in copying, but startups and businesses are all about execution. And executing on a successful business model is (at least a bit) safer than the usual wandering in the dark.

Doing some researches, I found dozens of successful examples; Germany leads the way with MyVideo (Youtube clone), Alando (eBay, and bought by eBay), CityDeal (bought by Groupon), StudyViz (Facebook clone), Xing (Linkedin); France have been in the news recently with Bon-Prive' (Groupon clone, again), even Romania has its own Groupon (Zumzi) clone. And the list could go on forever.

So should we stop doing... whatever we are doing... and go and start a copycat business? Maybe.

Certainly you won't go that far creating a Facebook clone: Facebook is already localised in more than 100 languages. And if you are thinking about Groupon, there are already so many clones that it might not be worth the effort.

But there are at least two conditions that make a successful website or business worth copying:

it relies on knowledge that is specific to a certain country (f.i.: specific laws, taxes, deals with local businesses). That's why many Groupon clones have appeared: you need to be able to go on the field and sign agreements with the various shops. There are plenty of opportunity still open here: there's no alternative to Mint in many countries, just to mention one
it is not localised, and targets a customer sector that (abroad) doesn't speak english; that's the cause for many Digg and Youtube clones

So, when you think to the next big thing for you, it might be worth thinking about copycat businesses. You know the business model, you know exactly how to build the product... why not giving it a chance?

Week 0

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Following Tim Bull's example I'll try to post weekly updates/retrospective on what I'm doing. Hopefully that should help me to keep track of my many activities, and (arguably) it might be of interest of the blog casual reader, since I'll keep working in the startup/web development field.

Week 0 is not really a retrospective, but a short summary of what I'll start doing from tomorrow.

After 10 years of Java development, I'm starting my first customer project in Ruby and Rails. I cannot really talk about it that much, but in short it's a prototype for a vertical social network. I'm really looking forward to it

I still have some time available for consulting projects in the first quarter, since the Ruby contract won't be fulltime. I have three meetings scheduled next week to meet potential customers, but if you have any interesting project, feel free to contact me!

I'm starting also my project in the Italian CustomerDevelopmentCamp; I talked about this customer development "study and practice" group here. I'm keeping a very detailed diary inside the Google Groups, but I'll republish it here the contents in English

Noteworthy links, December 31st 2010

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Putting together a list of noteworthy links has become easier since I use Trunk.ly. Trunk.ly is a delicious replacement with a social twist: it automatically retrieves all the links you share on Twitter and Facebook, making the link curation super simple. Check it out!

Software patents have got to go! Enough said...
Startup/Tech Events in Europe, January-March 2011 Curated list of all the important technology, web and startup events in Europe in the first quarter of 2011
Lifestyle Design Experiment - Building Startups in Paradise The dream of many startuppers...
How to create a startup country It's about time to apply startup concepts and techniques in new fields... what about governments?
Lessons Learned in 2010 Lesson learnt by a lean startup practicioner
Customer Development in 10 weeks Build yourself you customer development course