React Microfrontend Applications for TVs and Game Consoles

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DAZN is the fastest-growing sports streaming service and during this talk, we will consider our experience building tv applications (for ps5, xbox, LG, Samsung and other targets) with micro frontend architecture. You may expect time travel to see how it started and what we have at the moment, what makes tv development different compared to the web, same as techniques that allow us to share code between targets. You will learn how we test our application with an in-house remote testing lab as well as our deployment and release process.

This talk has been presented at React Summit 2022, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

The speaker is Denys, a principal engineer at The Zone.

You can find code samples on Denys's GitHub account and his website.

The Zone is available on web devices, mobile devices, smart TVs, game consoles, and set-top boxes.

The two main groups of targets at The Zone are HTML5 (React targets) and Bespoke (native languages).

The Zone initially used a monolith architecture.

The current architectural approach at The Zone is a micro frontend architecture called ALEP (Asynchronous Library Loading).

Some of the domains in The Zone's architecture include the authorization domain, catalog domain, and landing page domain.

The Zone uses a combination of data providers and machine learning techniques to detect key moments in sports content.

The Zone faces challenges such as release congestion and the need for independent infrastructure for different targets when multiple teams work on the same domain.

Feature-based testing is done by individual teams, while integration testing is done on a final pre-prod environment called staging.

Denis Artyuhovich
Denis Artyuhovich
25 min
17 Jun, 2022

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Video Summary and Transcription
This Talk discusses the architecture journey of a sports engagement platform, transitioning from a monolith to a microfrontend architecture. The ALEP microfrontend architecture is introduced to manage the complexity of a complex catalog and enable efficient deployment and version management. The deployment and release process involves using AliB and updating metadata in the deployment dashboard. The integration to React and TV development process involves using the AliB package and having independent lifecycles for packages. Shared code is used across different targets, and testing is done in a remote virtual lab. Focus management and key moments detection in sports are also addressed.

1. Introduction and Architecture Journey

Short description:

First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Denys, a principal engineer at the zone. We change every aspect of how fans engage with sports, from content distribution to creating our own documentaries. We are available on various devices, including web, mobile, smart TVs, game consoles, and set top boxes. Today, we'll focus on the HTML5/React targets. In 2016, we started with a monolith architecture for Samsung Hue, but as we grew, we transitioned to a micro front-end architecture with clear domain boundaries. If you're interested in our journey from monolith to microfrontend, I recommend watching a talk by my colleague Max Galla. We also introduced a deployment dashboard for our new microfrontends, allowing independent releases for each domain.

Cool. First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Denys. I'm principal engineer at the zone. And if you want to check some code samples I'm going to refer to, you can use my GitHub account and also if you want to find any of my contacts, just follow my website.

And at the zone, we change every aspect how funds are engaging with sports, starting from their content distribution to creation of own documentaries and fully extended augmented experience with amazing feature we built, which are working in real time. But what's interesting as well is that we are available on dozens of devices, such as of course, web devices, mobile devices but also smart TVs, game consoles, set top boxes and about these three last three, we're going to talk in now in next 20, 25 minutes or so.

So before we continue, I just want to share this split we have at the zone. We have two groups of targets. One group is HTML5, or we probably can call it React targets, and another one is Bespoke. So today, we will be focusing on the first one. The other one is more for native languages and as you can see it covers so many different targets, which are Samsung, LG, PlayStation, et cetera. There are lots of them.

So now, I'd like you to take all of you to some adventure and show how our architecture journey started, how we iterated over it and what we currently have. And as you can imagine, with Samsung Hue back in 2016, when the Zone just started, it was the way application created by even third party company and we started of course, with monolith architecture because monolith is kind of obvious choice for Samsung Hue as it helps you to grow fast enough at a small scale. Yeah. And it works really well until your development team and features in your application is relatively small. And later on, we stepped into the rapid growth space where we have hundreds of engineers and of course, at this scale, one of the most important things is to give teams autonomy. It's actually where we step in as like engineering company and instead of the third party company, we have rebuilded application completely from scratch. It is a micro front-end architecture where we implemented vertical split of the vertically split of the mains. And just to give you idea of the domains, so domains is something with that time we thought so, with clear boundaries. For example, we have authorization domain which is responsible for signing-sign-up, recovery password flow. We have the catalog domain which is basically responsible for browsing of the content. We have learning page domain which is responsible for C pages and so on. And I believe you get the idea. If you're interested in this journey how we actually like iterate it from the monolith to the microfrontend, I really recommend you this talk from my friend and colleague Max Galla which he did, I believe, last year. Really interesting journey. But same time we also introduced deployment dashboard for our new microfrontends. So this domain can be released independently and that time the only one team were responsible for the entire domain. And everything was well, it was really, I mean, big step forward from what we had previously.

2. Complex Catalog and Microfrontend Architecture

Short description:

We have a complex catalog with features like player, key moments, and a panel with mini-apps developed by various teams. Managing this complexity becomes challenging as multiple teams share deployable artifacts and face release congestion. To address this, we introduced the ALEP microfrontend architecture, which allows for vertical domain splitting and horizontal feature-based splitting. This architecture enables features to be fetched on demand, improving deployment efficiency and version management.

But we continue to grow, we reach the point where we have more than several hundreds of engineers and some of the domains become way more complex than they were initially. So, catalog itself, yeah, it's a place where you can draw the catalog, but it also has quite a lot features. For example, player. Player, quite complex, feature-rich package, adaptive bitrate, digital rights management, other things which it's aimed to support. Later on, we have key moments. You see these dots? Yeah? Right in a player. They are actually representing the interesting moments of the game. We have the thing for various sports, for football, for boxing, for motor GP, and recently we introduced it for the baseball. I highly recommend you to check it out. And we apply various techniques, including the machine learning, to detect them in real time and plot on the timeline correctly according to the video. So, you know exactly when moment happens. As I said, it works for VOD content and for live content.

We have also the panel here, which is sort of mini-app where lots of mini-things integrated, but they all are developed by various teams, such as Formation. They, again, live feature, fully in sync with video. If any transformation happens on the pitch when you're watching the game, it's going to reflect that change, yeah? And as you can imagine, we need something different to manage all of this, because Catalog no longer belongs to the one team. There are lots of teams which are now sit there. So we're getting the same problems. Multiple teams share the single deployable artifacts and we're getting the release congestion because if you're promoting the change between your test environments and probably you have staging for pre-prod and prod environment, and let's say a player tries to release their changes, but they stuck or found an issue, yeah? Any other team kind of blocked with their release because they need to wait until the issue will be resolved or someone going to take out those changes from the code, which is tricky in many cases. We have APAC release statuses even though I just demoed to you. We have a nice deployment dashboard where you can deploy the chapter, its entire chapter. You know the version of the entire chapter, but what version of the package? Well, good luck to find out. You need to either maintain something or develop custom solution for this. Yeah, quite tricky. So we iterated over it and we introduced new microfrontend architecture, which we call ALEP, which stands for Asynchronous Library Loading. So we still keep our vertically splitted domain, but it's complimentary, fulfill it with horizontal feature base split where features can be fetched on parent demand and I'm going to demo it now how exactly it works. So let's consider first from web perspective, what happens in action when you visit the zone. As the first thing, you enter in our website, we're loading your bootstrap. Bootstrap is a model which is responsible to fetch all further chapters. It's also responsible to prepare our runtime environment. It's also like checks your old status to know which chapter to load and some other stuff.

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