       _______       ___           _______. __    __         __       _______. 
      |       \     /   \         /       ||  |  |  |       |  |     /       | 
      |  .--.  |   /  ^  \       |   (----`|  |__|  |       |  |    |   (----` 
      |  |  |  |  /  /_\  \       \   \    |   __   | .--.  |  |     \   \ 
      |  '--'  | /  _____  \  .----)   |   |  |  |  | |  `--'  | .----)   | 
      |_______/ /__/     \__\ |_______/    |__|  |__|  \______/  |_______/

Channel based dashboard powered by node and socket.io.

In other words, instead of showing a dashboard crammed full of widgets, the emphasis is on a screen that subscribes to a channel and then that channel rotates between content. This channel approach also allows for interruptible content to be injected as needed.

setup

clone this repo
npm install # to install the dependencies
node app.js

dashboard api

channel creation

POST to /channel

broadcasting

The dashboard accepts a json object defining a type and data.

At present, type is limited to either pane, url or text.

Panes

A pane is a piece of information displayed by the dash that will fit into the billboard component provided by the channel. It lacks header and footer, so depends on the page setup it's injected into.

Example Pane request

POST http://dashboard/broadcast/CHANNEL_NAME
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "type": "pane",
  "data": "/flag/SOME_FLAG_HASH"
}

URLs

A URL will inject an iframe into the billboard of the channel and therefore will not inherit any js libraries or styles. The content needs to be considered "self-contained".

Example URL request

POST http://dashboard/broadcast/CHANNEL_NAME
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "type": "url",
  "data": "http://github.com"
}

Text

This is similar to a Pane but will be wrapped in some billboard type styling.

Example text request

POST http://dashboard/broadcast/MYCHAN
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "type": "text",
  "data": "dashboards are ggggrrreeaatt!"
}

defining content

Right now, there is one type of content that dash can track: Flags.

Flags

A flag is basically a visual state machine that is one of fail, stale, ok. An expiration for stale and fail are available.

An ok flag will move to the stale state if no update has been received within stale seconds. A stale flag will move to fail if no update has been received within fail seconds after ok.

NOTICE the fail timer and the stale timer begin at the same time so if fail is smaller than stale, then stale will be skipped.

At present, the API for stale is not available.

example flag creation

POST http://dashboard/flag
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "name": "my new flag",
  "stale": SECONDS,
  "expire": SECONDS
}

would return {flag: SOME_UNIQ_HASH}. This hash provides the key used to interact with this flag.

The flag depends on an external reporter to set the state of the flag.

example flag set

POST http://dashboard/flag/SOME_UNIQ_HASH
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "state": "ok"
}

The proper values are one of [0,1,2] or [fail,stale,ok].

Flags can be retrieved with the following:

example flag retrieval

GET http://dashboard/flag/SOME_UNIQ_HASH
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "flag": "ok", "name":"Bocephus Flaggerton"
}

flag can be one of [ok,stale, fail].

example flag retrieval, html

GET http://dashboard/flag/SOME_UNIQ_HASH
Content-Type: text/html
<div><i class="icon-flag flag-ok"></i></div>

This returns an html version of the same flag. The html may change a bit depending on styling, so for parsing purposes it's best to use the json.

jarrodb/dashjs