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• Tornado (http://www.tornadoweb.org) is installed - this can by done via easy_install

sudo easy_install tornado

Copy config-dist.ini to config.ini and make any necessary changes. Simply run python server/server.py from the repository root directory to start the server. Then visit http://127.0.0.1:8888/ in your browser to view.

You need to enable at least one plugin. Do this by symlinking the plugins you want from plugins to enabled-plugins

ln -s /full/pathto/plugin/myplugin /full/pathto/enabled-plugins/myplugin

• restart your python server

You've now got a plugin receiver running. You need to run the plugin to poke information into the receiver. See below.

Plugins communicate with dashboard clients through the Tornado websocket server via a REST interface. They can be written in any language, and run on-demand, by cron or be a persistent daemon.

Communication to Tornado from the plugin is via a POST request.

URL: http://tornadoserver:port/update/{$plugname}
POST Request
POST data should be in the format:
  data={$jsonformatteddata}

If you wish to send multiple data parts at once, instead of sending multiple POST requests you can send them in a single format the Tornado server understands for caching purposes.

Use the POST data format:

data={$jsonformatteddata1}&data={$jsonformatteddata2}&data={$jsonformatteddata3}

The server will cache the last 20 messages from a plugin, and when a new client connects the server will pushed all cached messages to it.

Plugin data should be handled and formatted via javascript, this is the basic skeleton:

plugins.pluginname = {

    /**
    * This prevents the plugin frontend from receiving data when the dashboard
    * is hidden (e.g. a different tab is open). This property is optional.
    */
    noBackgroundData: true,

    /**
     * This function runs when the dashboard is first loaded for a client
     */
    start: function() {
        html = ('<div class="plugin" id="pluginname"><h1>Plugin's name</h1><ol></ol></div>');
        $('div#body').append(html);
    },


    /**
     * The plugin may not always receive one piece of data at once (especially when a client first connects),
     * so remember to check to see if the data is an array
     */
    receiveData: function(data) {

        // Check for a single message (is not array?)
        if (!$.isArray(data)) {
            // Make it an array for simpler processing
            data = [data];
        }

        var messagebox = $('div#pluginname ol');

        for (c in data) {
            var content = data[c];

            var node = $('<li>').text(content);
            node.hide();

            messagebox.append(node);
            if ($('li', messagebox).length > 10) {
                $('li:first', messagebox).slideUp().remove();
            }

            node.slideDown();
        }
    }
}

jQuery and d3.js are included on the page, and when a client first connects all plugin client.js files are automatically included from the subdirectories symbolically linked in enabled-plugins. Plugins can include additional files via $.getScript() using the URL format http://tornadoserver:port/plugin/pluginname/staticfilename.