This is a web app for browsing services available on the People's Open Network.
It is a simple node.js/express based web app that uses mDNS/DNS-SD to listen for services and informs the web clients about them using websockets.
For testing purposes, check out Simple Service Advertisement to advertise local services in order to see the browser in use.
git clone https://github.com/sudomesh/service-browser.git
cd service-browser/
npm install
./node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js
Specify the port and hostname where you want the server to listen in config.js.
./index.js
The service browser will be available at:
http://HOST:PORT/static
where HOST and PORT are defined in config.js
service-browser uses Gulp, Browserify, and Bower to manage front-end dependencies. So this means that you can use npm packages inside of client-side javascript There's pretty decent documentation for these modules all over the internets.
Gulp is a javascript build system/task manager. By running ./node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js you are
running the ./gulp/tasks/default.js task which runs a build and then watch task.
The build task will optimize images, compile LESS and run browserify.
All of the tasks are under ./gulp/tasks. You can run any individual tasks by running:
./node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js build where build is the name of the task you'd want to run
Browserify is a nifty tool which lets you use CommonJS require syntax to pull in npm modules into
client-side JS. Thanks substack!
Most of the magic is inside of ./gulp/tasks/browserify.js
Say you wanted to use lodash (an underscore analog) in a client-side script. You could do the following
npm install --save lodash (use --save if you want to add the module to package.json)
Then inside your client-side JS, you could do the following:
var _ = require('lodash')
console.log(_)
```
We also make pretty significant use of browserify-shim, which lets us include packages that aren't
installable via npm. This is mostly setup inside of `./package.json`. The relevant passage looks
similar to:
```
"browser": {
"jquery-cookie": "./www/bower_components/jquery.cookie/jquery.cookie.js",
"sockjs-client": "./www/bower_components/sockjs/sockjs.js"
},
"browserify": {
"transform": [
"browserify-shim",
"hbsfy"
]
},
"browserify-shim": {
"jquery-cookie": {
"depends": [
"jquery:$"
],
"exports": "jquery.cookie"
},
"sockjs-client": {
"exports": "SockJS"
}
}
```
The values of "browser" are key value pairs where the key is the require() name and the value
is the location of the package
"browserify-shim" delineates the specifics of each of the shimmed packages. There is a field
for what the package depends on and what it exports. That would be the result of the assignment
```
var variable = require('sockjs-client')
```
The location of the package can be anywhere, although I've been mostly using bower to install
3rd party packages, which brings us to....
## Bower ##
Bower is a fairly generic and unopinionated front-end package manager. I've been using it to install
anything that doesn't exist in npm as well as css packages (like bootstrap)
To install a new package, cd into ./www and then run
```
../node_modules/bin/bower install --save bootstrap
```
where bootstrap is the package you want to install and --save saves it to bower.json
There are a variety of ways you can now use these packages:
- browserify-shim: see above
- less/css: inside of `./www/css/imports.less` you'll see the lines:
```
@import "../bower_components/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
```
That will import the bootstrap less file, which will then be compiled by browserify, etc.
# Troubleshooting #
If you get an error like this:
```
Module version mismatch, refusing to load
```
Then ensure that you don't have any older versions of node, node-gyp or npm sitting around. Deleting older versions of node-gyp from ~/.node-gyp/ may fix this problem.
If you get an error like this:
```
../src/mdns.hpp:31:20: fatal error: dns_sd.h: No such file or directory
#include <dns_sd.h>
^
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Release/obj.target/dns_sd_bindings/src/dns_sd.o] Error 1
make: Leaving directory `/home/mini/sudo/mesh/service-browser/node_modules/mdns2/build'
gyp ERR! build error
gyp ERR! stack Error: `make` failed with exit code: 2
gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.onExit (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/build.js:267:23)
gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:98:17)
gyp ERR! stack at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:797:12)
gyp ERR! System Linux 3.11.0-19-generic
gyp ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd /home/mini/sudo/mesh/service-browser/node_modules/mdns2
gyp ERR! node -v v0.10.26
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v0.12.2
gyp ERR! not ok
```
it looks like it can be fixed by installing libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev
```
sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev
```
If you get an error similar to the following:
```
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/weak/-/weak-0.2.2.tgz
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/bindings
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/bindings
> weak@0.2.2 install node_modules/weak
> node-gyp rebuild
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/gyp_main.py", line 18, in <module>
sys.exit(gyp.script_main())
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'script_main'
gyp ERR! configure error
gyp ERR! stack Error: `gyp` failed with exit code: 1
gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.onCpExit (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/configure.js:337:16)
gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:98:17)
gyp ERR! stack at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:789:12)
gyp ERR! System Linux 3.11.0-15-generic
gyp ERR! command "node" "/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! node -v v0.10.15
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v0.12.1
gyp ERR! not ok
npm ERR! weak@0.2.2 install: `node-gyp rebuild`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the weak@0.2.2 install script.
npm ERR! This is most likely a problem with the weak package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR! node-gyp rebuild
npm ERR! You can get their info via:
npm ERR! npm owner ls weak
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! System Linux 3.11.0-15-generic
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "weak@0.2.2"
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.15
npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.23
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! not ok code 0
```
this might be helpful. From
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21155922/error-installing-node-gyp-on-ubuntu
```
#!/bin/bash
#On Ubuntu Saucy:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python2.6
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.6 20
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.7 10
#you can switch between 2.6 & 2.7 using:
sudo update-alternatives --config python
```
It looks like python 2.6 might be a dependency for the mdns module, in which case the stack overflow answer allows for easy switching between 2.6 and 2.7
# ToDo #
* Currently only lists http/https services
* Searching services
* Organizing by category/etc.
# License #
[AGPLv3](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html)