BrewBlox UI

UI representation of the BrewBlox project

Requirements

• Node.js
• NPM
• Docker
• Docker-compose

Run

# install dependencies
$ npm install
$ docker-compose pull
 
 
# serve with hot reload at localhost:8080
$ npm start

Additional dev commands

# Restart backend containers 
$ npm run compose:new
 
# Build a production version of the software. This is served at localhost:9000 
$ npm run devbuild

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Architecture Concepts

BrewBlox mostly adheres to the Vue application structure, but defines a set of concepts within this framework.

Dashboard

The BrewBlox UI is centered around the concept of it being a dashboard that can be filled by whatever is relevant to the user. Dashboards are agnostic displays of widgets.

Provider

Each device or service supported by the BrewBlox UI is implemented as a provider. All interaction with those supported devices or services is encapsulated here.

Providers are modular, and placed in the plugins directory.

Service

Services are instances of Providers. If you have two connected Sparks, you'll be using two separate services as created by the Spark provider.

Feature

Providers offer one or more features. Features provide the Vue components required to render and support dashboard items.

Dashboard Item

Comparable to how services are instances of providers, dashboard items are instances of features.

Widget, Wizard, Form

To implement specific functionality, features can offer various Vue components, inheriting from a generic base class.

• To be displayed on a dashboard, a feature must have a widget.
• To allow the user to create new dashboard items, a feature must have a wizard.
• For more extensive configuration, features can provide a Form. These are rendered in modal windows.

Datastore

Local application state is kept using VueX. Settings that are not session-specific (dashboards, dashboard items, services) are persisted to the BrewBlox datastore.

The full datastore state is loaded on startup, and all changes are persisted here.

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How do I....

Support a new device (add a provider)

In order to support the gizmo device:

• Create the src/plugins/gizmo directory.
• In src/plugins/gizmo/index.ts, add an initializer:

import { createProvider } from '@/store/providers/actions';
 
export default({ store, router }: PluginArguments) => {
  createProvider(store, {
    id: 'Gizmo',
    displayName: 'Totally Awesome Gizmo Device',
 
    // IDs of separately created features
    features: [],
 
    // Called whenever a new service is created
    initializer: async (store, service) => {},
 
    // Called after a service is created
    fetcher: async (store, service) => {},
 
    // Called every few seconds, to keep service state updated
    updater: async (store, service) => {},
 
    // Globally registered Vue components
    wizard: 'GizmoWizard',
    page: 'GizmoPage',
  });
}

• Add your plugin to the list of known plugins in src/main.ts.

import gizmo from './plugins/gizmo'
 
const plugins = [
  portal,
  spark,
  history,
  gizmo, // new
];

Add a separate store for my provider

Plugins can define and register their own store modules. If you only need a single store for your provider (it is shared by all services of type Gizmo), you can register it during plugin initialization.

If each Gizmo service needs a separate store, it should be registered in the initializer function defined in the provider.

import { registerService } from '@/helpers/dynamic-store';
import { Service } from '@/store/services/state';
import { RootState, RootStore } from '@/store/state';
import { Module } from 'vuex';
import { actions } from './actions';
import { getters } from './getters';
import { mutations } from './mutations';
import { GizmoState } from './state';
 
const module: Module<GizmoState, RootState> = {
  actions,
  getters,
  mutations,
  namespaced: true,
  // state as a function allows creating this module multiple times under different names
  state: () => ({
    gizmos: {},
    gadgets: [],
    awesome: true,
  }),
};
 
// We're using service ID here - this will create a store module specific to this service
export const register = async (store: RootStore, service: Service) =>
  registerService(store, service.id, module);

See Vuex dynamic modules for more information on dynamic stores.