Westfield Stratford City

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/

This entry was posted on September 9, 2009 at September 9, 2009 and is filed under Projects, Ruby On Rails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.