@bluecadet/launchpad

🚀 Launchpad

Launchpad is a highly configurable suite of tools to manage media installations. It can:

• Launch, control and monitor muiltiple processes (via PM2)
• Download and locally cache content from various common web APIs
• Bootstrap Windows PCs with common exhibit settings
• Consolidate and route application logs
• ...and much more

%%{ init: { 'flowchart': { 'curve': 'bumpX' } } }%%
graph LR
    Launchpad:::package
    
    Launchpad --> Scaffold:::package -.-> PCs([PCs])
    Launchpad --> Content:::package -.-> APIs([APIs])
    Launchpad --> Monitor:::package -.-> Apps([Apps])
    
    APIs -.-> Cache[(Cache)]
    Apps -.-> Cache

    click Launchpad "/packages/launchpad" "Core package for logging, events, hooks"
    click Scaffold "/packages/scaffold" "Windows config, automation, app installs"
    click Content "/packages/content" "Download, cache and process content"
    click Monitor "/packages/monitor" "Launch and monitor apps via PM2"

    classDef package fill:#69f,stroke:#000,color:#fff

Getting Started

1. Install launchpad: npm i @bluecadet/launchpad
2. Create a launchpad.json config (see configuration)
3. Optional: Bootstrap your PC with npx launchpad scaffold
4. Run npx launchpad

Run npx launchpad --help to see all available commands.

Note: Launchpad is typically triggered run by a startup task (e.g. Windows Task Scheduler) using npx launchpad. When installed globally (npm i -g @bluecadet/launchpad), you can use the launchpad command instead. See config loading for more info.

Configuration

Each launchpad package is configured via its own section in launchpad.json. Below is a simple example that uses the content package to download JSON and images from Flickr and monitor to launch a single app:

{
  "content": {
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "flickr-images",
        "files": {
            "spaceships.json": "https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?format=json&nojsoncallback=1&tags=spaceship",
            "rockets.json": "https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?format=json&nojsoncallback=1&tags=rocket"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "monitor": {
    "apps": [
      {
        "pm2": {
          "name": "my-app",
          "script": "my-app.exe",
          "cwd": "./builds/"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Note: Scaffold is configured separately in a PowerShell file. This is a guided process when you run npx launchpad scaffold.

Documentation

All available config settings across packages can be found in the links below:

• monitor: Run and monitor apps
• content: Download and cache remote content
  • sources: An array containing one or more of the following content source options:
    • airtable: Download content from Airtable
    • contentful: Download content from Contentful
    • json: Download content from JSON endpoints
    • strapi: Download content from Strapi
    • sanity: Download content from Sanity
• logging: Route logs to the console and to files
• hooks: Execute scripts before or after common events (e.g. after content has been updated)

Config Loading

• By default, Launchpad looks for launchpad.json or config.json at the cwd (where you ran npx launchpad/launchpad from)
• You can change the default path with --config=<YOUR_FILE_PATH> (e.g. npx launchpad --config=../settings/my-config.json)
• If no config is found, Launchpad will traverse up directories (up to 64) to find one
• All config values can be overridden via --foo=bar (e.g. --logging.level=debug)

Packages

This repo is a monorepo that includes the following packages:

• @bluecadet/launchpad
• @bluecadet/launchpad-content
• @bluecadet/launchpad-monitor
• @bluecadet/launchpad-scaffold
• @bluecadet/launchpad-utils

Each of these packages can be launched and configured independently (except for utils), so if you only need app-monitoring or content updates, you can install only @bluecadet/launchpad-monitor or @bluecadet/launchpad-content.

Requirements

Launchpad requires Node >=17.5.0 and NPM >=8.5.1 for Windows API integration and workspaces support.

We recommend installing the latest version of NodeJS and NPM via nvm-windows:

nvm install latest
nvm use latest
npm i -g npm@latest