JIF Dashboard

A dashboard framework to quickly build widget-based dashboards with.

Supports sections built out of widgets using a packery grid. Check out the Samples folder for a starting template.

Demo

See live demo here

Quickstart

Using npm and webpack

npm

Add jif-dashboard and dependencies to the package.json file:

"dependencies": {
	"jquery": "^3.0.0",
	"jquery-ui-dist": "^1.12.1",
	"jif-dashboard": "^1.0.0",
}

Webpack

Import the files into CSS and JS files:

For example, in index.js

// must have css loader
import 'jif-dashboard/dashboard.css'

import 'jif-dashboard/dashboard-core'
import 'jif-dashboard/dashboard-util'
import 'jif-dashboard/dashboard-template'

If you would like to use a loader such as babel, include jif-dashboard in webpack.config.js. Add appropriate dependencies in package.json.

module:{
	loaders:[
		{
			...
			include: [
				path.resolve(__dirname, "node_modules/jif-dashboard")
			],
			loader: 'babel',
			...
		}
	]
}

JIF has several front styling dependencies:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.12.1/themes/base/jquery-ui.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/css/bootstrap.min.css">

How to Use

General Flow

Initialize the grid

Set Options and initialize the Dashboard grid with a call to Dashboard.init(). This creates the grid that makes up the core of the Dashboard.

Add a widget

Create a widget and pre-register any widgets you want with Dashboard.preregisterWidgets(). Further details on widget creation and registration are provided in the Widgets section.

Create a section

Make a new section and add widgets to it. A more detailed overview is in Sections.

Widgets

Widgets hold the content of the dashboard. They have various sizes and have the option of being draggable and resizable. They also have various controls: links, refresh, close, and minimize.

widget-root.js

It is highly recommended that your widgets extend widget-root.js. As seen in the sample app, it is very helpful in helping widgets load smoothly. It provides a structure to your widgets, and any of its methods can be overridden. Place it in the same directory as your widgets.

Creating a Widget

Make a new directory called widgets to hold your widgets. The path should be js/widgets/. If you need to use a different path, override the Dashboard.registerWidget function.

Create a widget using widget-template.js in /samples for reference. The widget filename should be the same as widgetId. For example, a widget with an id of widget1 should be in a file named widget1.js. There is also another reference id name. If this value is not set in widgets, then it will be set to widgetId. This represents the internals of the widget - such as tables, charts, input fields, or anything else that represents your data.

The outer shell of widgets is created by dashboard-template.js and accessed through the init() function in each widget. Options are passed with Dashboard.TEMPLATES.widget(), such as name, title, and size. The widget-shell-id, a randomly generated id number for internal widget handling. The template can be overridden with a custom template by creating a new file and setting Dashboard.TEMPLATES = require('custom-template.js');.

You may explicitly register the widgets or leave it to be dynamically loaded by section.

To register the widget yourself:

// a file such as index.js

Dashboard.preregisterWidgets({
	'widget1' : require('./widgets/widget1'),
	'widget2' : require('./widgets/widget2'),
	'widget3' : require('./widgets/widget3'),
	// etc
});

Widget Options

title: (string) The title to be displayed for the widget.

size: (string) In order of increasing size - 'small', 'third', 'medium', or 'large'. The default is small.

customButtons: (string html) Use this to add custom html buttons to the header of the widget. The default is an empty string.

hideLink: (boolean) Whether or not a link icon will show up on the header of the widget. Clicking the link icon will copy a link to the widget to the clipboard. The default is false.

hideRefresh: (boolean) Whether a refresh icon will show up on the widget header. Clicking the icon will cause the widget to refresh by fetching. The default is false.

refreshOnStart: (boolean) Whether the widget will refresh after it is loaded. This option is helpful if resize and storage are on and you have something in the widget body whose size depends on the widget, as it will ensure that everything is sized correctly.

name: (string) This is used internally and must be unique.

widgetId: (string) If you do not set a name, then you must have a widgetId. This can be set or passed through when registering widgets.

// widget1.js

module.exports = function(id) {
	var extended = {
		widgetId: id, // id is passed from registering widget
		name: 'mywidget',
		title: 'My Widget',
		size: 'medium',
		hideLink: true,
		hidRefresh: false,
		customButtons: '<li><i class="add-account fa fa-plus-circle"></i></li>',
		// ...
	}
	var widget = _.extend({}, widgetRoot, extended);
	
	// register presence with screen manager
	Dashboard.addWidget(widget);
};

Loading flow

This is a walkthrough of how the widget is loaded. The earlier steps may vary depending on how you registered your widgets:

1. Add widget to a section for displaying
2. Widget is registered
3. addWidget in dashboard-core is called from the widget
4. Dashboard calls widget.init 5. widget.setData is called by widget.init 6. widget.ready is called by widget.init 7. widget.render is called by widget.init 8. widget.fetch is called by widget.render 9. widget.postRender is called by widget.render 10. widget.subscribe is called by widget.init

Sections

Dashboards may have many sections. Sections are used to group widgets and as a reference to store widget sizes and sort orders.

Widgets are added to sections to be displayed. This will also register any widgets that you have not explicitly registered yourself:

'sectionName': function() {
	var widgets = [
		{ widgetId: 'widget1' },
		{ widgetId: 'widget2' },
		{ widgetId: 'widget3' }
	];

	Dashboard.showSection('sectionName', widgets);
},

Options

There are a few options you can use with the framework. Required settings are appName and widgetContainer.

The defaults are:

settings: {
	appName: 'cakeshop',
	widgetContainer: '#grounds',
	resize: true,
	drag: true,
	storage: true,
	minWidth: 200,
	minHeight: 250
}

Set the options with Dashboard.setOptions() and pass in the settings you wish to change.

appName: (string) The name of your application

widgetContainer: (string) The id for the container that will hold your widgets.

resize: (boolean) Whether widgets are resizable

drag: (boolean) Whether widgets are draggable

storage: (boolean) Whether dragged locations and resizes are saved to be loaded on refresh/start. This is saved based on the dashboard section.

minWidth: (int) The minimum width of a widget. This is only relevant if resizing is on.

minHeight: (int) The minimum height a widget can be resized to.

The Widget Sizer

As an alternative to minWidth and minHeight, you may specify an element as the widget sizer by adding a class .widget-sizer to it. Jif-Dashboard will use the minimum width or height if it is specified in the options, then the widget sizer dimensions, and resort to the default only if nothing is present.

External Functions

Jif Dashboard provides some external functions that may be helpful.

#####reset(singleSection) If resize, drag, and storage are enabled, reset will cause the widgets to be reset to their original layout. Passing in the boolean singleSection is optional. If true, it will only reset the current section, and if false, every section will be reset.

#####removeWidget(shellId) This will remove the widget from the grid completely. Requires the widget's shell id, which can be accessed from the widget with this.shell.id.

#####clear() This clears the grid of displayed widgets, but does not remove them from the grid.

#####hide(shellId) This will hide one widget, but will not remove it from the grid. Requires the widget's shell id, which can be accessed from the widget with this.shell.id.

#####show(opts) This will show the widget if it was hidden. opts is an object: {widgetId: 123456}, where widgetId is the widget's shell id, which can be accessed from the widget with this.shell.id.

Utils

A few utils methods are provided in dashboard-util.js.

emit: Prints a maintenance message to the console, and triggers a WidgetInternalEvent the type of which can be passed into the emit call. This is helpful for triggering other events on the dashboard.