
Summary
This one's a tad looser; no specific use cases to code up. Just do something cool! Node.JS is a really awesome technology for real-time stuff within your Drupal site, and the Node JS Integration Module on drupal.org makes it pretty easy to get up and running. We're excited to see what you all can whip up.
Resources
We've been working on another project recently that integrates Node.JS with Drupal, and we'd like to share some helpful resources with you that we found along the way:
- The documentation for the node.js integration module is very good. Definitely start there.
Watch out for this bug in the configuration builder; it bit us for several hours!Fixed! - This blog post by Ryan Oles can help you get your node.js clients to talk back to Drupal. It explains the basics of writing an extension to the existing node.js server that comes with the node.js module. Definitely worth a look.
- We've found the basics of Node.JS to be relatively easy to pick up, but if you want a good introduction, check out this free online book. It gives a solid introduction to the concepts behind server side javascript with Node.JS.
- A presentation on Node.JS by one of the module's maintainers, Howard Tyson, is what got us started with Node.JS. You can watch the presentation here.
Good Luck! Get Node'n!
This prize is sponsored by WebEnabled, an amazing platform for Drupal development. With WebEnabled, you can spin up a new Drupal site with ease, code and develop on your own or with a team, and then deploy to any number of production environments. If you haven't tried working on their platform before, I'd suggest you sign up for a free account and check it out! The winner of this challenge will receive 3 free months of a starter virtual private server (VPS) from WebEnabled! Free hosting?! Yes please!
This module uses a couple contrib modules along with the Node.js integration module to provide a close replica of Google real time analytics. I wrote an indepth blog post about the whole module over at my companies blog here: http://lcadvanced.com/blog/do-something-cool-nodejs
