Building Responsive WebsitesNYU Computer Science Website Overview

Daniel Tsadok

Wednesday, January 30, 13

Who Am I?Daniel Tsadok

Courant Web Developer, 2008-present

I write software for and managecs.nyu.edu

cims.nyu.edumath.nyu.edu

Wednesday, January 30, 13

Types of Content

• News *

• Course Schedule *

• Office Hours *

• Contact Information

• Static Content

• Events/Colloquia *

• Final Exams *

• Department Calendar *

• Program Information

• User Content (Not covered)

* Dynamic

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Dynamic Content

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Content ManagementGoals:

• Consistent Layout

• Simple interface

• Version Control

• Access Control

• Addressable/Routable

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CMS Live Demo

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CMS Feeds

CMS Page

/events/17/foo

Feed

/events/CMS Page

/events/18/bar

CMS Page

/events/19/baz

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Imported ContentRails App Server

DB

DB

Internal CS database (MSAccess...)

CoursesFinal Exams

Faculty ListingOffice Hours

csv import script (cron)

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Architecture

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Original

ApacheWeb Server

Static Files Clients

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Original

ApacheWeb Server

Static Files Clients

Pros and Cons?

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Current Architecture

ApacheWeb Server

Static Files

ClientsRails App Server

DBResponse

Dynamic Content

User pages

Home Directories

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mod_proxy

ApacheWeb Server ClientsRails App Server

Request

ProxyPass /rails/(.*) http://rails/$1

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Authentication

• Courant LDAP (CIMS account)

• NYU (ITS) LDAP (Net ID)

• before_filter in Rails

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Why Rails?

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Why Rails?Model:class Colloquium belongs_to :semester

Controller:@colloquia = @current_semester.colloquia.limit(5)

View:<% for colloquium in @colloquia %> <div><%= colloquium.title %></div><% end %>

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Other Frameworks

Sinatra (simpler than Rails)

Torquebox: jruby on Rails with JBoss

Groovy on Grails (JVM)

Scala (JVM)

BackboneJS (MVC for client-side)

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Thank You

tsadok@cs.nyu.edu

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