Atlasboard is a dashboard framework written in nodejs. Check out the website.

Installation

npm install -g atlasboard

Creating your first wallboard

atlasboard new mywallboard

Running your wallboard

Using the global atlasboard module:

atlasboard start

With a predefined port:

atlasboard start 3000

Command line filters

To run one particular job only:

atlasboard start --job myjob

you can use regular expressions:

atlasboard start --job "my(.*)b"

Or one particular dashboard:

atlasboard start --dashboard mydashboard

or use regular expressions:

atlasboard start --dashboard my(.*)board

This is specially useful during development so you only bring up the components you need.

Running your wallboard using Atlasboard as a module

You can start your wallboard without needing Atlasboard to be installed globally. From your wallboard directory, assuming that you have start.js run:

npm start

start.js looks like this and it is included in > 1.0:

var atlasboard = require('atlasboard');
atlasboard({port: process.env.ATLASBOARD_PORT || 3000, install: true}, function (err) {
  if (err) {
    throw err;
  }
});

You'll need to add the atlasboard dependency to your package.json.

Importing your first package

You will probably want to reuse other people's dashboards, widgets and jobs. To do so, you'll need to import a "package", which is just a git submodule.

The Atlassian package is a good place to start. If you haven't already, initialise a git repository for your new wallboard, and then type:

git init
git submodule add https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/atlasboard-atlassian-package packages/atlassian

Packages and resources

Atlassian contributions

• Atlassian Atlasboard package

Community contributions

• atlasboard-red6-package
• dcopestake's atlasboard-aws package
• arhs-atlasboard
• atlasboard-sonarqube-package

If you'd like your packages to be included here, please send us a link.

Documentation

Migrating from Atlasboard 0.x

Nothing is supposed to break once you upgrade but you may want to update a few things:

• Make sure you are running nodejs >= 0.10
• Make sure your configuration is properly moved to the new file structure and delete the old configuration files. Adjust verbosity in logging as you see it fit.
• Writing jobs: Old jobs are still compatible but you probably want to start writing new ones using the new onInit and onRun handlers (read below for more details).
• Updating dashboards: Feel free to update your dashboards to use the new title, titleVisible and description properties so they look good in the dashboard list page.

Architecture

Components

Dashboards

To create your first dashboard, type the following command:

atlasboard generate dashboard mydashboard

This will generate a default dashboard using this template.

Dashboard descriptor structure:

• enabled enables/displays the dashboard. This is a quick way to hide your dashboard without having to delete it. Defaults to true.

• title dashboard title (optional). Most of the time you will not need this.

• titleVisible if true, the title will appear in the wallboard. Otherwise, it will be used only in the dashboard list page.

• description dashboard description (optional). To be displayed in the dashboard list page.

• layout

  • gridSize grid size is customizable. Example: "gridSize" : { "columns" : 8, "rows" : 6 }

  • customJs the names of any extra JavaScript libraries, located in assets/javascripts, that you'd like included. (warning: this could be moved out of the layout key in future releases).

  • widgets an array of objects detailing each widget to be displayed on the dashboard. Each widgets object has the following attributes:

    • enabled enables/disables this particular widget/job. Defaults to true.

    • row value from 1 to maxRows. You can also use r.

    • col value from 1 to maxColumns. You can also use c.

    • width number of columns this widget will occupy. You can also use w.

    • height number of rows this widget will occupy. You can also use h.

    • widget widget name. If you want to refer to a widget inside an specific package, use the namespace <package>#<widgetname> syntax (e.g. atlasboard#quotes).

    • job Job to be executed. The same namespace syntax applies to specifying jobs.

    • config The config key or array of keys that will be used for this dashboard item.

• config a config object for this dashboard, containing a key-value container for job configuration.

Example dashboard config file

{
  "enabled": true,

  "title": "aurora",
  "description": "aurora's wallboard",

  "layout": {
    "gridSize" : { "columns" : 6, "rows" : 4 },
    "customJS" : [],
    "widgets" : [
      {
        "row" : 1, "col" : 1,
        "width" : 2, "height" : 3,
        "widget" : "quotes", "job" : "quotes-famous", "config" : "quotes"
      }
    ]
  },

  "config" : {
    "quotes" : {
      "numberQuotes" : 10
    }
  }
}

Using the common dashboard config file

If you want to share the same configuration for more than one dashboard, place it inside /config/dashboard_common.json so that you don´t have to repeat it. Atlasboard will merge the configuration keys found in this file with the current dashboard configuration.

Using multiple configurations

If you want to use multiple configurations for your job, set the config value to an array of keys. Each key can exist in either the current configuration, the shared configuration, or both.

For each configuration key in the array, the local value will override the global, and key n+1 will override key n.

Multiple Configurations Example

One use case for multiple configurations is an api root URL used by multiple jobs.

In the shared configuration below, the system-api key contains a url pointing to the api location. It also includes a default path value.

config/dashboard_common.json

"config:" {
  "system-api": {
    "url": "http://localhost/api/v1",
    "path": "/"
  }
}

There are two jobs referenced by the dashboard, system-users and system-products. Both jobs use the same api, but for different data resources, and at different update intervals.

my_dashboard.json

{
  "widget" : "users",
  "job" : "system-users",
  "config": [ "system-api", "system-users"]
},
{
  "widget" : "products",
  "job" : "system-products",
  "config": [ "system-api", "system-products"]
}

...

"config": {

  "system-users": {
    "path": "/people",
    "interval":60000
  },

  "system-products": {
    "path": "/products",
    "interval":10000
  },
}

Each job references the shared key (system-api) as the first item in its config array. It adds the local, overriding configuration key (system-users and system-products) as the next entry. The job's onInit method can then use these values to construct the correct URL for api calls.

Resulting config for system-users job:

{
  "url": "http://localhost/api/v1",
  "path": "/users",
  "interval": 60000
}

Resulting config for system-products job:

{
  "url": "http://localhost/api/v1",
  "path": "/products",
  "interval": 10000
}

Jobs

Jobs are run in the background (server side) by the scheduler. Their purpose is to send data to the client-side widgets. You can generate one in the default package by typing:

atlasboard generate job myjob

This will generate a job using this template.

A very simple job could look like this:

module.exports = function(config, dependencies, jobCallback) {
    var text = "Hello World!";
    // first parameter is error (if any). Second parameter is the job result (if success)
    // you can use the following dependencies:
    // - dependencies.request : request module (https://github.com/mikeal/request)
    // - dependencies.logger : logger interface

   jobCallback(null, {title: config.widgetTitle, text: text});
};

If you want to do something more interesting, like scraping data for example:

var $ = require('cheerio');

module.exports = function(config, dependencies, job_callback) {
	var logger = dependencies.logger;
	dependencies.easyRequest.HTML('http://myprivatewebsite.com', function(err, html) {
		var result = [];
		if (err) {
			logger.error('there was an error running my job, let\'s log it!');
			// send error message to the widget so it can handle it
			job_callback(err);
		} else {
			var $page = $(html);
			$page.find('table tr').each(function(index, element) {
				result.push($(element).find('td:nth-child(1)'));
			});
			// this is being sent to the widget through the socket channel
			job_callback(null, { data: result });
		}
	});
};

Since 1.0, you can export a job object containing an onInit and onRun functions:

module.exports = {

  /**
   * Executed on job initialisation (only once)
   * @param config
   * @param dependencies
   */
  onInit: function (config, dependencies) {

  },

  /**
   * Executed every interval
   * @param config
   * @param dependencies
   * @param jobCallback
   */
  onRun: function (config, dependencies, jobCallback) {

  }
}

This is handy when you want to run some initialisation code only once in your job. This is also the preferred way and the old way may not be supported in future releases.

Job dependencies

As you may have noticed, Atlasboards exposes a few handy dependencies. Check their source.

Widgets

Widgets run in the client-side (web browser). To create one:

atlasboard generate widget mywidget

This will generate a widget using this template. These are the files created for you in your default package:

mywidget.html

<h2>mywidget</h2>
<div class="content">
  <p>This is how you link a "cold.png" image that is located on the 'hot-overview' widget inside the
    "default" package</p>
  <img src="/widgets/resources?resource=default/hot-overview/cold.png" alt="my image"/>
</div>

Since 1.0, you can create widgets in stylus and pick up variables exported by your current theme:

mywidget.styl

.content
    font-size 2em
    color $gray-lighter

    .error
      color $error-color

mywidget.js

widget = {
  //runs when we receive data from the job
  onData: function(el, data) {
    //The parameters our job passed through are in the data object
    //el is our widget element, so our actions should all be relative to that
    if (data.title) {
      $('h2', el).text(data.title);
    }

    $('.content', el).html(data.text);
  }
};

Widget event handlers

You can use the following handlers in your widget:

/**
 * Called when the widget gets initialised. Before the arrival of first data
 * @param {JQuery} $widgetContainer widget container object
 * @param {string} widgetId
 */

onInit: function($widgetContainer, widgetId){}

/**
 * Called when the widget receives data from the server
 * @param {JQuery} $widgetContainer widget container object
 * @param {Object} data data parameter
 * @param {string} widgetId
 */

onData: function($widgetContainer, data, widgetId){}

/**
 * Called when the widget receives an error response from the server
 * @param {JQuery} $errorContainer error container object
 * @param {Object} data data parameter
 * @param {Object} data.error error object
 * @param {string} widgetId
 */

onError: function($errorContainer, data, widgetId){}

Most of the times you only want to work with onData though.

Client side plugins

You can add client side plugins to extend Atlasboard's default behaviour. Just register global event handlers that will be called for each widget according to its life-cycle.

The client side events you can subscribe to are:

// widget events:

/**
 * Called when the widget gets initialised. Before the arrival of first data
 * @param e event
 * @param {JQuery} data.$widgetContainer widget container object
 * @param {string} data.widgetId
 */

atlasboard.on("widgetInit", function (e, data) {}

/**
 * Called when the widget receives an error response from the server
 * @param e event
 * @param {JQuery} data.$errorContainer error container object
 * @param {Object} data.data.error error object
 * @param {string} data.widgetId
 */

atlasboard.on("widgetError", function (e, data) {}

/**
 * Called when the widget receives data from the server
 * @param e event
 * @param {JQuery} data.$widgetContainer widget container object
 * @param {Object} data.data data object
 * @param {string} data.widgetId
 */

altasboard.on("widgetData", function (e, data) {}

// socket.io events:

atlasboard.on("socketConnected", function (e) {}
atlasboard.on("socketDisconnected", function (e) {}
atlasboard.on("socketReconnectFailed", function (e) {}
atlasboard.on("socketReconnecting", function (e) {}

For example, the client side plugin that manages the spinner is just this:

(function () {

  atlasboard.on("widgetInit", function (e, data) {

    var spinner = new Spinner({
      className: 'spinner',
      color: '#f5f5f5',
      width: 5,
      length: 15,
      radius: 25,
      lines: 12,
      speed: 0.7,
      shadow: true
    }).spin();

    $("<div>").addClass("spinner").append(spinner.el).appendTo(data.$widgetContainer.parent());
  });

  atlasboard.on("widgetPreData", function (e, data) {
    $('.spinner', data.$widgetContainer.parent()).hide();
  });

  atlasboard.on("widgetPreError", function (e, data) {
    $('.spinner', data.$errorContainer.parent()).hide();
  });

})();

Or, let's see you want to build a silly plugin that makes the content of the 'goal-metrics' widget yellow:

// custom-color.js
(function(){

  atlasboard.on("widgetInit", function(e, data){
    if (data.widgetId === 'goal-metrics') {
      data.$widgetContainer.css({css: 'yellow'});
    }
  });

})();

Remember that you add custom JS to your wallboard using the customJS field in the dashboard.json file:

    "layout": {
        "gridSize" : { "columns" : 20, "rows" : 12 },
        "customJS": ["custom-color.js", "jquery.peity.js", "md5.js"],
        "widgets": [ ... ]

Credentials

Check the wiki for more info about the globalAuth.json file

You can also use environment variables in your globalAuth.json:

{
  "hipchat": {
    "token": "${HIPCHAT_TOKEN}"
  },
  "stash": {
    "username": "${STASH_USER}",
    "password": "${STASH_PASS}"
  },
  "bitbucket.org": {
    "username": "${BITBUCKET_USER}",
    "password": "${BITBUCKET_PASS}"
  },
  "graphite": {
    "username": "${GRAPHITE_USER}",
    "password": "${GRAPHITE_PASS}"
  }
}

in your .bashrc:

export HIPCHAT_TOKEN='yourtoken'

you can define where the authentication file lives by setting the appropriate path here:

//config/auth.js

{ "authenticationFilePath": "globalAuth.json" }

Configuration

Both default Atlasboard configuration and the local configuration for your wallboard is stored in the config folder.

Your wallboard will extend Atlasboard's.

<yourwallboardlocation>/config/logging.js
<yourwallboardlocation>/config/auth.js
<yourwallboardlocation>/config/theming.js

Also, you can extend the final configuration with your ENV:

ATLASBOARD_CONFIG_<config-file-name> expects JSON format:

export ATLASBOARD_CONFIG_theming='{"theme":"foundation"}'

Logging

Atlasboard uses tracer Since 1.0 you can override the default logging configuration:

<yourwallboardlocation>/config/logging.js

Logging from your job:

module.exports = function(config, dependencies, job_callback) {
  var text = "Hello World!";

  var logger = dependencies.logger;
  logger.log('I am a log message');
  logger.trace('text is ' + text);
  logger.debug('text is ' + text);
  logger.info('I am an info message');
  logger.warn('I am a warning message');
  logger.error('this is an error!')

  job_callback(null, {title: config.widgetTitle, text: text});
};

Log visualizer

If you enable real-time logging in yourwallboard/config/logging.js, you will be able to access logs through a socket.io connection:

{
  "liveLoggingWebAccess" : true
}

Custom templates

You can use your custom dashboard.ejs or dashboard-list.ejs template just creating a file with that name in:

yourwallboard/templates/dashboard.ejs
yourwallboard/templates/dashboard-list.ejs

Theming support

Since 1.0 you can use themes. For example:

yourwallboard/themes/inferno/variables.styl

The inferno theme overrides the following stylus variables:

$background-color = red
$widget-background-color = red;
$widget-border = 0
$widget-box-shadow = none

You can define as many themes as you want:

yourwallboard/themes/default/variables.styl
yourwallboard/themes/inferno/variables.styl
yourwallboard/themes/adg/variables.styl
yourwallboard/themes/lego/variables.styl

and set your current one in the theming.js configuration file:

// yourwallboard/config/theming.js

module.exports = {
  theme: 'inferno'
};

These are the variables you can override with your custom theme.

Adding express routes in your job

Since 1.0, jobs have access to the express app, so you can easily add routes to the app. Example:

/**
 * Job: my job
 */

module.exports = {

  onInit: function (config, dependencies) {
    dependencies.logger.info('adding routes...');
    dependencies.app.route("/jobs/mycustomroute")
        .get(function (req, res) {
          res.end('So something useful here');
        });

  },

  onRun: function (config, dependencies, jobCallback) {
    // code to be executed every interval
  }
};

Contributing to Atlasboard

• Raise bug reports
• Anything on https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/atlasboard/issues?status=new&status=open
• Submit new themes
• Other ideas: spike on Web Components, React views, widget administration UI, etc

Atlasboard core development

Running unit tests:

gulp unit

Building client assets

gulp build-client-js

Linting:

gulp lint

Watch mode (linting + testing + asset build)

gulp watch

Roadmap

• Using npm instead of git submodules for package management.
• Make editing a dashboard configuration easier.
• More and better widgets.
• Make easier to introduce front-end dependencies in packages.
• Spike on React and Web Components for the UI.

Release history

1.1.3

• Fix issue#125 - Don't use hard links for dashboard files

1.1.2

• Fix issue #130. Logger configuration not working

1.1.1

• Fix issue #133. Also removes calls to util.isArray, maintaing compatibility with 0.10.

1.1.0

• New dashboards get started linked to the original dark theme instead of the new customised dark blue one.
• Allow multiple configurations per widget (thanks William King).
• Fix issue #120: create syntactically correct job test skeleton when job name contains '-' signs (thanks leif.hanack).
• Allow setting the screen size that the dashboard will be displayed on (thanks Colin Edwards).

1.0.1

• Bug fixes.

1.0.0

• Bump socket.io to support windows installations (fixes issue: #99).
• Bump to Express 4 (Atlasboard now requires node >= 0.10).
• General dependency bump.
• Add theme support. Add "foundation" theme.
• Add client side plugins points.
• Add stylus support in widgets with access to the global theme palette.
• Jobs can register onInit functions (see the docs above).
• Add support for using "w" and "h" as "width" and "height" properties in dashboard definition.
• Add gulp.
• Better configuration management, that can be overridden easily in the wallboard.
• Better logging configuration.
• General code refactoring and cleanup.

0.13.0

• Fix issue #98: Expose pushUpdate functions to jobs to push updates to the widget independently of the scheduler interval cycle
• Internal scheduler refactoring. Remove singletons

0.12.0

• Added a check to change the NPM command executed based on platform

0.11.0

• Remove console-helper
• Allow custom templates to be defined in the local wallboard
• Add bower to manage Atlasboard core front-end dependencies
• Bump jQuery to 2.x. IE8 not supported anymore (if it ever was)
• Unique events for widgets, even if they have the same combination of job, widget name and configuration.
• Use "disabled" text instead of default error icon when widget is disabled
• Send the AtlasBoard version in the User-Agent (request job dependency)
• Fix deprecation warnings in use of Express
• Warning when multiple callback execution detected in a job

0.10.0

• Enable the cookie jar for request
• Introduce install command and --noinstall option to start command
• Add HipChat roomInfo endpoint and support for api v2
• Upgrade request to ^2.53.0
• Add support for expanding environment variables in globalAuth.json
• Send errors to the client immediately (ignoring retry settings) on the first run
• Always send error events to the client
• Don't use absolute links / proxy support

0.9.0

• Fix warning icon image
• Use spin.js instead of an image spinner
• Bump gridster to 0.5.6
• Bump rickshaw to 1.5
• Add an experimental confluence library to assist in fetching pages using Content API
• Make sure config is never undefined
• Fixing schedulers so job execution doesn't overlap if it takes too long

0.8.0

• Improve project and job scaffolding
• Add unit test to new job template
• Bump up a bunch of dependencies (it was about time!)
• Improve socket.io reconnect
• Add new shinny 8x6 grid size screenshot

0.7.0

• Allow configurable (per dashboard) grid size (issue #64)
• Bump up cheerio to 0.13.1
• Bump up grister to 0.5.1
• Avoid widget title wrapping
• related to issue #64
• Fix package.json "bin" attribute relative path.

0.6.0

• FIX: Issue #62. Properly namespace widget CSS by working with AST rules
• Issue #50 and #60. Make easier developing new jobs by adding filters to atlasboard start
• Refactor commands
• Added more unit tests
• Install only production dependencies on atlasboard start
• Ensure that we return pg clients to the connection pool
• Other minor fixes

0.5.6

• Added easyRequest for easier querying HTTP resources.

0.5.5

• Upping rickshaw graphics

0.5.4

• workaround was clearing the cache)

0.5.3

• FIX: Issue #53 Two versions of colors on disk throw.
• Some refactoring and some of the pending code style changes.
• Add build status using drone.io
• package order resolution in widgets
• FIX: Function.prototype.apply expect array in second arguments

0.5.2

• Add moment as job dependency
• Add underscore job dependency
• Add async dependency for jobs
• Use non-minified versions for easy browser debugging
• Add/remove widget-level loading class for better styling context

0.5.1

• Issue #42: fixed small regression for reconnects

0.5.0

• Move packages from packages to samples/project/packages to avoid users build the dashboard in an atlasboard clone.
• Clearer error message when job not found
• Add {"start": "atlasboard start"} to project scaffold package.json
• Error 500 rendering stylesheets/application.css
• Issue #42: Nicer handling of error messages in the UI
• Add rickshaw library to atlasboard core
• Add postreSQL job dependency
• Move third party assets to a separate third-party folder
• Add storage dependency. Refactor dependency injection.
• Issue #28 Add support for credentials file path

0.4.0

• Change widget naming to not include widget id anymore
• Added default config file so the custom one gets extended from this one.
• Fix default dashboard so it has the necessary widgets to fill the whole screen.
• Reorganize tests.
• Use logger to wrap the error when a dashboard has the wrong format.
• Make job manager error proof in case config file doesn't exists. If config file exists and it is invalid it should throw error.
• Added hipchat integration. New hipchat dependency.
• Allow fetching resources from widget folder.
• Display error and exit if http server port is in use
• Fix problem when displaying error with prevent the widget from displaying data again.
• A dashboard name must match /^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$/ to be valid.
• Other minor fixes.

0.3.1

• FIX: Require node 0.8 or higher in package.json

0.3.0

• Real-time logging visualization!.
• Issue #13: "generate dashboard" generates files in a sub-folder.
• Removed sample dashboard from atlasboard.
• Ability to disable dashboards by setting enabled:false in dashboard config file.
• Job task is executed in the context of the job object, so we can manage state across executions.
• Error handling and logging on jobs
• Prevent XSS in log viewer.
• Extra test coverage
• Disable logging by default through the config file
• Use connect-assets to serve css (and parse stylus)
• Enable serving of custom images from dashboards
• Improve startup banner

0.2.0

• can now resize browser and scale AtlasBoard.
• use connect-asset for common assets, since we are fetching now widget assets on demand.

0.1.1

• new atlasboard "list" command.
• handle errors on child process when executing "npm install".
• use minified versions of javascript libraries.

0.1.0

• first release after some important changes in the core architecture.