I today completed a twelve-day stint working with Westfield London in collaboration with Delete London, working on Ruby on Rails development.

The very lovely digital marketing team had some ideas for quick wins to improve the user experience on the London Westfield website, including adding affiliate product data to the retailer pages, and creating an events booking system. I was brought in to help realise these ideas, and turned around two rapid solutions in the allotted time.
Affiliates
The challenge was to find a way to manage the variety of retailer and affiliate partners that Westfield deal with, in an efficient way. I developed an XML parser using REXML’s stream listener to read XML information from an arbitrary affiliate partner, and create product objects from the live stream. These objects then interface with the existing CMS system and generate XML documents ready to be picked-up in the view. Not only does this vastly improve the look of the retailer pages and raise the profile of their clients, but their click-throughs will earn affiliate fees. Win!
Events
Responding to a very tight deadline, I developed an events booking system, designed for the digital marketing team to administer events with minimal effort. The system, implemented in two days, has an administrative back-end that allows the creation of events, with multiple dates attached, composed in an AJAX-form. I used unobtrusive_date_picker to render a user-friendly date picker, as well as restful_authentication to handle the login process. In order to launch within the timeframe, we decided to build the system as a stand-alone webapp, which was supposed to be hosted on a third-party, but after an eleventh-hour issue, I ended up offering my own server as a host, and therefore have my first corporate client! However, the rendered form sits within an IFRAME to hide the URL from the customer.

Meanwhile, hundreds are signing up to Westfield’s events, and the marketing team can download their required CSV data on demand, and the form will deactivate once individual dates become full.

If you’re into fashion, you should sign-up! http://uk.westfield.com/london/offers-events/events/william-baker-booking

The first phase of the Westfield Stratford City website has gone live, designed to attract new leasing business and provide information about the huge shopping complex under construction in Stratford.

I’m pleased to see this site go live, as its easily the most complex Ruby on Rails application that I’ve ever worked on. Building on top an existing rails application is relatively uncommon, and Westfield’s international centres require several infrastructural amendments. Not least, the integration with Teamsite, Westfield’s CMS system. The existing framework already defines plugins and libraries for working with the technology, but the challenge was getting my hands dirty and figuring out what was happening from looking at code.

I was involved in all the new Ruby on Rails requirements of the site (I wasn’t responsible for the design, or any of the snazzy effects, quite a bit of which was done in flash), including some features that are still in the latter stages of testing and user acceptance. I developed new templates and views unique to the Stratford site, and created a blogging/news section that has an administrative back-end, allowing moderators to moderate comments on blog entries and publish press-releases. I also created a contact form that prospective clients can use to e-mail Westfield.

Overall the project has been an insightful experience into enterprise-level Ruby on Rails projects. I’ve learned new technologies too- including the RSpec framework. Its interesting to get a feel for the Ruby on Rails experience going into an existing, large project- rather than whipping up a scaffold and turning out webapps in a week.

Before the new features are launched, check-out the new site, including photographs of the construction and a webcam… http://uk.westfield.com/stratfordcity/