Recommendation integration¶
There are several ways to integrate the REST calls with the Personalization server and to avoid blocking webpage rendering, if the communication with the Recommender is distrusted or interrupted.
Use page blocks¶
Ibexa DXP ships with a number of page blocks that editors can place on landing pages and configure to present scenario results. To work, these blocks require that Personalization and scenarios are properly configured. For a list of all page blocks that are available out-of-the-box, see Page block reference.
Request recommendations synchronously¶
The simplest way to load recommendations is to synchronously request the Personalization server for recommendations as they're needed. This way is sufficient in most cases. The most important drawback is that the request time increases by the time of the recommendation request. If the network is overloaded or the Personalization server isn't available, it can lock the request.
Load in the bottom¶
You can place the code that loads the data from the eZ Recommender at the bottom of the generated document and flush the output buffer to the client before requesting recommendations. The browser gets a whole page to render and can display it even if the very end of the page is still loading. Then the JavaScript code with the recommendation information loaded at the bottom of the page must fill the gaps on the page with recommendations as soon as it's completely loaded.
Non-blocking load in the background¶
If the website is implemented in a language that supports multithreading or non-blocking I/O, the recommendation request can start right after the browser request is received. The page generation and the recommendation requests are accomplished in parallel. By combining this idea with the previous solution and placing the recommendation results at the bottom of the page you can avoid any interruption in the processing.
Load from JavaScript using JSONP¶
You cannot request the recommendation controller server directly from the JavaScript (over AJAX library or directly over XMLHttpRequest) because of the cross-domain restriction in most browsers. One of the possible ways to work around this limitation is JSONP.
Load over proxy¶
A better solution than JSONP is to provide the proxy on the server side, which forwards script requests to the Personalization service.
It can be implemented as a basic proxy by using the mod_proxy module of the Apache Webserver.
It transfers the data and the JavaScript renders the response into HTML itself.
An alternative approach is to create the HTML code on the server side for every target page, to simplify the script on the client side.
You can use the following tools as an implementation of such a proxy: the Apache proxy module, an independent daemon like “netcat” or a PHP script.
Comparison¶
An overview of pros and cons for each of the presented techniques:
| Feature | Synchronous loading | Bottom loading | Background loading | JSONP | XMLHttpRequest + Proxy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isn't blocked by ad blockers or no-track plug-ins | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - | ✔ |
| Works if JavaScript is disabled | Yes | depends | - | - | - |
| Works for server without multithreading functionality | ✔ | ✔ | - | ✔ | ✔ |
| Compatible with frontend caching on the server | - | - | - | ✔ | ✔ |
| Doesn't delay page rendering | - | depends | depends | ✔ | ✔ |
| Supports authentication for recommendation fetching | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - | depends |