dashrun

Run a node.js script and watch process execution on a terminal dashboard.

npx dashrun your_script.js [arg...]

dashrun comes with a built-in memory dashboard and allows you to create custom ones.

Create a custom dashboard

Probe

You need first to create a probe to send message from your script (forked process) to the dashboard.

A probe can be a simple line of code in your script:

let message = { eventName: "myEvent", data: Math.random() };
process.send(message);

or a file:

//myProbe.js (dashrun will automatically inject this file into your script)
setInterval(() => {
  //Sending every second to the dashboard a message with a random value
  process.send({ eventName: "myEvent", data: Math.random() });
}, 1000);

Note that message must be sent with process.send core function.

Dashboard

A dashboard is a function whose role is to run the script and render informations when script fires events.

module.exports = (script) => {
  // Prepare UI components
  // Run the script
  // Update UI components on new script events
};

You are free to use any library to create a dashboard.

blessed-contrib is a good choice and dashrun comes with a thin layer over it to ease dashboard construction.

const path = require("path");
const contrib = require("blessed-contrib");
const { DashboardLayout } = require("dashrun");

module.exports = (script) => {

  //Create a layout and define area where bless-contrib components will be rendered
  let layout = new DashboardLayout();
  let topLeft = layout.area(0, 0, 6, 6);
  let topRight = layout.area(0, 6, 6, 6);

  //Create a component, add it to layout and then render
  let component = contrib.lcd({
    label: "Current value",
    color: "red",
    ...topLeft, //Set position of the component
  });
  layout.add(component);
  layout.render();

  //Run the script with your custom probe
  let probe = path.join(__dirname, "myProbe.js");
  script.run([probe]);

  //Listen to events sent by the probe and update component
  script.on("myEvent", (data) => {
    component.setDisplay(data);
    layout.render();
  });
};