How Missions.Me is Embracing Laravel
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Missions.me is a faith-based international non-profit that has transitioned to using Laravel for its web applications, enhancing their platform and improving user experience. The organization has faced and addressed various technical challenges such as timezones, database relationships, big data issues, permission management, and security concerns, employing Laravel features and custom solutions. Looking ahead, Missions.me plans to refactor its codebase, upgrade to Laravel 5.1, and further innovate its architecture and user interface.
How Missions.Me is Embracing Laravel
- 1. How Missions.Me is Embracing Laravel.
- 2. About Me • Lead Developer • Full-stack PHP Developer • From designer to developer • Experience in SEO & CRO • Volunteer student pastor and world traveler.
- 3. Meet the Team The Missions.Me Staff
- 4. About Us • Faith-based international non-profit charity based in Rochester, MI • Hosted thousands of travelers since 2004. Over 44 trips to 4 continents and dozens of countries. • Facilitate humanitarian aid including water wells, houses, rescue homes, orphanages, shoes, and more.
- 5. One Nation One Day The greatest achievements begin with audacious questions
- 6. MM Network of Sites • dominicrusso.com • angelhouse.me • 1nation1day.com, shop.1nation1day.com • lamejorrepdominicana.com • missions.me, api.missions.me
- 7. The MM App • Website (marketing, info) • CMS (staff & users) • CRM • Crowd Fundraising Tool • Social Network • Web Service (API for mobile apps - iOS, Android)
- 8. MM App Overview • Frontend Website Marketing, information, etc. • User application Mange trip reservations, projects, fundraisers, donations, records, profile • Admin portal CMS, CRM • Web Services API for Mobile Missions app (iOS, Android)
- 9. Current Setup • Two networked SSD VPS on Digital Ocean managed by Forge with a MySQL database • Laravel 4.2, and Lumen; Bootstrap 3, jQuery, Vue.js • Beanstalkd, Google Apps for Non-profits (SMTP) • authorize.Net API payment gateway • MaxCDN; BugSnag; GitHub
- 10. Evolution of MM App • Started with Codeignitor, Foundation; Shared web hosting, FTP, and no version control! • 3 mo. development time, 6 developers, bankrupt our startup, launched v1.0 in the summer of 2013. • I was hired full-time in October 2013. I rebuilt the app by myself in one month, using Laravel 4.0. • By Mid 2014 we’d upgraded to Larvel 4.2 and migrated to DigitalOcean and Forge.
- 11. - Leonardo da Vinci “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- 12. Timezones PROBLEMS: - Deadlines for everything. - International user base. - Admins setting deadlines in EST but the server saves and returns UTC.
- 13. Timezones SOLUTION: - Accessor and Mutator methods on models. - Carbon library to add or subtract the necessary GMT offsets and set the correct timezone.
- 14. Relationships PROBLEMS: - Database normalization can require a lot of extra tables. - A user has the following relationships: contact, profile, timezone, shirt size, groups … - Admin created content needs a table. Then that content gets manipulated by a user, so that needs a new table; so on and so on.
- 15. Relationships SOLUTION: Eloquent Relationship Methods - One to One - One to Many - Many to Many - Polymorphic - Many to Many Polymorphic (Yes I’m using all of them!)
- 16. BIG Data PROBLEMS: - N+1, - detailed filters and searches - exporting, Eloquent sometimes too slow for large memory-intensive exports (server time outs).
- 17. BIG Data SOLUTIONS: Eager loading for N+1 issue. URI query strings with Query Scopes in the models allowed for thousands of result variations. Query builder, raw SQL statements, and pushing that logic to a queue job, I was able to get the export speed needed.
- 18. Permissions PROBLEM: Admins, staff, interns, group owners, user content management, etc. This requires more than authentication.
- 19. Permissions SOLUTION: Created a permissions table with boolean attributes (more control than user roles). Using Laravel’s route filters I can check a user’s access permission on protected routes.
- 20. Slugable PROBLEM: A lot of pages need user-friendly URLs over numerical IDs (pages, profiles, projects, fundraisers, etc.)
- 21. Slugable SOLUTION: The power of polymorphism! Use a slugs table, validation to ensure unique slugs, a polymorphic relationship, and a PagesController to lookup a slug and then route it to it’s class type.
- 22. Security PROBLEM: We save a lot of sensitive personal information. Medical records, passport copies, visas, etc. We have to comply with laws: PCI, Hippa
- 23. Security SOLUTION: We can encrypt using Laravel’s Bcrypt method. We can store and retrieve files in a secure app/ storage outside the public directory using Laravel’s file class.
- 24. Time Savers Automate “chores” and “tedious” tasks with custom artisan commands. Example: grab all profile pics, rename, and organize in minutes
- 25. Scaling Missions.Me works at a relentless pace, is growing rapidly, and is a pioneer in it’s industry. Mobile Missions API in just 4 weeks using Lumen. lamejorrepdominicana. com - 1 week dev time with Laravel.
- 26. Workflow Task based rapid prototyping SCRUM and Agile practices Git-flow branching model: Master, Develop, Feature, Release, Hotfix
- 27. The Future of MM • Refactor - some code is 2 years old - lots of code smells! • Upgrade to Laravel 5.1 • Move to distributed system managed with Envoyer - load balancer, multi-servers, zero down time • Adopt an API centric architecture (Lumen micro-services) • Create a richer UI with a JavaScript framework (polymer, vue.js) • Offer Missions.Me as a SAAS