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Part 3: Run Adobe Target NodeJS SDK for Experimentation and Personalization on Edge Platforms (CloudFlare Workers)

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September 14, 2021
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Author: Artur Ciocanu (arturc85303583)

This is the third part in our series that covers Adobe Target NodeJS SDK with On-Device Decisioning capabilities and how to run it in a serverless/edge compute environment. In this third installment, we will be covering Cloudflare Workers. The parts are:

Part 1: Akamai Edge Workers and Adobe Target NodeJS SDK
Part 2: AWS Lambda@Edge and Adobe Target NodeJS SDK
Part 3: Cloudflare Workers and Adobe Target NodeJS SDKStep by step guide

As mentioned in the first two articles, we love Terraform and we use it heavily for Infrastructure Automation. In this blog, we will show how you can leverage Terraform and Adobe Target NodeJS SDK to create and deploy a Cloudflare Worker.

Step by step guide

Cloudflare Worker is a great technology if you intend to run some compute as close as possible to end-users. Cloudflare has points of presence in 200+ locations across the globe which ensures that you can have your logic running close to your customers. To make sure we have a repeatable process, just like in previous articles, we will be leveraging Terraform.

Before we begin there are a few prerequisites:

Cloudflare Account: You will need a valid Cloudflare account and credentials. Terraform relies on these credentials.
Terraform: We will use it to create all the required Cloudflare resources. Please check the official Hashicorp documentation on how to install Terraform on your particular OS. In this article we will be showing examples using Mac OS X.
NodeJS: We will use NodeJS to get the Adobe Target NodeJS SDK dependency as well as using NPM to package the JavaScript code and prepare it for Cloudflare Worker.

Creating the zone

In order to use Cloudflare Worker, we need to have a zone in place. A zone is similar to a domain and it is required to be able to work with Cloudflare. Here is the Terraform code required to create a zone:

resource "cloudflare_zone" "zone" {
  zone = var.zone_name
}

As we can see it is pretty straightforward to create a zone. We can provide other arguments to the cloudflare_zone resource like plan, type, etc but what we have is enough for our sample.

Creating the worker script

Once we have a zone, the next step is to create the worker script. In order to create the worker script, we will need to get the Adobe Target NodeJS SDK dependency. This can be achieved using:

$ npm i /target-nodejs-sdk -P

After all the NPM dependencies have been installed, we can proceed with the sample code.

import TargetClient from "@adobe/target-nodejs-sdk";
import RULES from "./rules";
const createTargetClient = () => {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    const result = TargetClient.create({
      client: "targettesting",
      organizationId: "74F652E95F1B16FE0A495C92@AdobeOrg",
      decisioningMethod: "on-device",
      artifactPayload: RULES,
      logger: console,
      events: {
        clientReady: () => resolve(result)
      }
    });
  });
};
addEventListener("fetch", event => {
  event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request));
});
async function handleRequest(request) {
  const headers = {
    headers: { 
      "content-type": "application/json"
    }
  };
  const body = await request.json();
  const response = await createTargetClient()
  .then(client => client.getOffers({request: body}))
  .then(deliveryResponse => deliveryResponse.response)
  .catch(error => error);
  return new Response(JSON.stringify(response), headers);
}

Note: The RULES constant references the On-Device Decisioning artifact rules.json file. This file can be downloaded from https://assets.adobetarget.com/<client code>/production/v1/rules.json. This file will be available only after you have enabled On-Device Decisioning for your Adobe Target account.

As in all the previous blogs, we have configured Adobe Target NodeJS SDK instance to use On-Device Decisioning to avoid hitting Target Edge network.

The Cloudflare Worker environment is quite similar to a browser ServiceWorker, so we can't really use Adobe Target NodeJS SDK as-is. We will have to make sure that the worker script is bundled for the "browser" environment, instead of the default NodeJS runtime. We will be leveraging Rollup and it's resolve plugin to make sure that we package everything neatly for the worker environment. More details and the necessary configurations for Rollup can be found in this repo.

Creating the worker route

So far we have created the zone and the worker script. To be able to access the worker via HTTP we have to create a worker route. Using Terraform this can be accomplished using this script:

resource "cloudflare_worker_route" "route" {
  zone_id = cloudflare_zone.zone.id
  pattern = var.route_pattern
  script_name = cloudflare_worker_script.script.name
}

As we can see here we are using the zone ID and script name. Another important piece is the pattern which in the simplest case can represent just the URL path that will be used to execute the worker script.

Testing it out

If everything was set up properly, then you should have an endpoint on your configured domain that once hit will invoke the newly created Cloudflare Worker. To make sure that everything is running properly we can use cURL:

curl --location --request POST 'https://odd.bpack.workers.dev/rest/v1/personalization' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{      
  "execute": {
    "pageLoad": {}
  }
}
'

Here are I am using a default workers.dev domain for demo purposes. The output of the cURL command would look something like this:

{
  "status": 200,
  "requestId": "9a08adf5a9d04d9bb014f810facee8bb",
  "id": {
      "tntId": "3665f03437a64ce886e0f1d4a95bb4dc.37_0"
  },
  "client": "targettesting",
  "execute": {
    "pageLoad": {
      "options": [
        {
          "type": "html",
          "content": "<div>Srsly, who dis?</div>",
          "responseTokens": {
            "activity.id": 125880,
            "activity.name": "[unit-test] target-global-mbox browsers",
            "experience.id": 3,
            "experience.name": "Experience A",
            "offer.id": 246867,
            "offer.name": "/_unit-test_target-global-mboxbrowsers/experiences/3/pages/0/zones/0/1612389131041",
            "option.id": 5,
            "option.name": "Offer5",
            "activity.decisioningMethod": "on-device"
          }
        },
        {
          "type": "html",
          "content": "<div>lion</div>",
          "responseTokens": {
            "activity.id": 125884,
            "activity.name": "[unit-test] target-global-mbox creatures",
            "experience.id": 2,
            "experience.name": "Experience C",
            "offer.id": 246876,
            "offer.name": "/_unit-test_target-global-mboxcreatures/experiences/2/pages/0/zones/0/1612389727806",
            "option.id": 4,
            "option.name": "Offer4",
            "activity.decisioningMethod": "on-device"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Closing thoughts

I really enjoyed working with Cloudflare Worker. The Cloudflare Terraform provider covers everything that I need and it was really, really easy to have everything up and running, even for a newcomer like myself.

I should highlight that I haven’t used Cloudflare Wrangler. For anyone doing serious Cloudflare Worker development, Wrangler should be the go-to tool. In my case the development flow was something like:

Adjust worker script
Run NPM build script
Run Terraform to upload the new bundle
Run cURL
If something is not quite OK, go to 1.

But even with this “primitive” workflow, it took me half an hour to have a working example. This includes creating the Terraform scripts, Rollup configuration and the sample worker script. It was quite a surprise to see how quickly I can change the code, upload it to Cloudflare network and see it running via cURL, literally in a matter of seconds. This is in stark contrast to Akamai EdgeWorkers which required many minutes until I could see the changes on the staging and production networks.

Another thing that allowed me to move quickly is the fact that Cloudflare Worker has a programming model similar to a ServiceWorker. Anyone who has done any WebWorker or ServiceWorker development will feel at home. For the most part standard Web APIs like fetch, Cache API, etc works as you would expect, which cuts down, significantly, the amount of "new" stuff you have to learn. This was a very smart decision made by Cloudflare Worker team.

Overall I am very pleased with the result and the demo that I have managed to build. I really enjoyed working with Cloudflare Worker. Although it looks deceptively simple, Cloudflare Workers are immensely powerful and can do a lot for you. With the latest additions like:

Workers KV
Durable Objects
Scheduled Event
Workers Unbound

The possibilities are limitless and constrained only by our own imagination.

Follow the Adobe Experience Platform Community Blog for more developer stories and resources, and check out Adobe Developers on Twitter for the latest news and developer products. Sign up here for future Adobe Experience Platform Meetups

Previous Blogs

Part 1: Run Adobe Target NodeJS SDK for Experimentation and Personalization on Edge Platforms (Akamai Edge Workers)

Part 2: Run Adobe Target NodeJS SDK for Experimentation and Personalization on Edge Platforms (AWS Lambda@Edge)

Resources

Source code — https://github.com/artur-ciocanu/odd-cloudflare-workers
Adobe Target — https://business.adobe.com/products/target/adobe-target.html
Adobe Experience Platform — https://business.adobe.com/products/experience-platform/adobe-experience-platform.html
Adobe Target NodeJS SDK — https://adobetarget-sdks.gitbook.io/docs/sdk-reference-guides/nodejs-sdk
Terraform — https://www.terraform.io/
Cloudflare provider — https://registry.terraform.io/providers/cloudflare/cloudflare/latest/docs
Cloudflare Wrangler — https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/cli-wrangler

Originally published: Jun 3, 2021

Step by step guide

Creating the zone

Creating the worker script

Creating the worker route

Testing it out

Closing thoughts

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Resources

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