spacebro

🚀 Spacebro 💫

In reference to Spacebrew by Rockwell Lab (http://www.rockwellgroup.com/search/LAB)

Spacebro automagically links apps between them. It binds them with events. You just start a spacebro server somewhere, connect your spacebro clients and listen to events`.

Prerequisites

Spacebro uses:

• socket.io to broadcast events.

Usage

As a CLI tool

Install it globally

$ npm i -g spacebro
# or
$ yarn global add spacebro

And just run the bin :

$ spacebro

You can configure it via CLI args:

$ spacebro --server.port 8888
# to view all possible arguments
$ spacebro --help

NOTE: Spacebro uses standard-settings, see the doc there to change settings via argv, env or file

As a module

$ npm i --save spacebro
# or
$ yarn add spacebro

And then connection with a spacebro-client as is. The spacebro client allows to connect your node application to spacebro server, just by requiring it.

See spacebro-client to learn more.

For openFramework you can also use ofxSpaceBro.

For python you can also use pySpacebroClient.

Options

flag	what it does
-h, --help	output usage information
-V, --version	output the version number
-P, --server.port <n>	give a port to spacebro
-M, --mute	option to hide informations
--semiverbose	do not show events datas in logs
-H, --hidedashboard	Allow to hide dashboard

API

Once connected, you can interact with spacebro, to know which other client is connected, what are the connections between them, add your own connections, ...

A connection is a link between an output of a client and an input of an other client. It is explained in details below.

register

Mandatory event for a client to send to spacebro, this is implemented inside spacebro-client so you should not have to use this, unless you are writing a client plugin in an other language.

The data sent with the register event should include the keys below:

{
  channelName: 'media-stream', // the socket.io channel to connect to
  client: {
    name: 'myclientname',
    description: 'Describe here what your client does',
    in: {// input events your client will react to
      inMedia: {
        eventName: "inMedia",
        description: "Describe the input event here",
        type: "all" // use all by default, or mention a type of data
expected
      },
      otherInput: {
        ...
      }
    },
    out: { // output events your client will send
      outMedia: {
        eventName: "outMedia",
        description: "Describe the input event here",
        type: "all" // use all by default, or mention a type of data
      }
    }
  }
}

addConnections

Add a connection between an output of a client and the input of an other client.

The data can be a connection or an array of connections with a connection respecting this schema

{
  src: {
    clientName: 'myclient',
    eventName: 'outMedia'
  },
  tgt: {
    clientName: 'myotherclient',
    eventName: 'inMedia'
  }
}

or a string or array of strings with this syntax:

myclient/outMedia => myotheclient/inMedia

When myclient emits a outMedia event, it will be forwarded to myotherclient with the event name inMedia

A connection event is emitted to all clients with the updated

removeConnections

Removes all connections listed in the data of this event: an array or single connection, in the schema seen above.
A connection event is emitted to all clients with the updated connections list

replaceConnections

Removes all connections on the current channel, and add the connections listed in the data of this event.
A connection event is emitted to all clients with the updated connections list

getConnections

Ask for a connection event, which is emitted to all clients with the current connection list on the current channel.

getClients

Ask for a clients event, which is emitted to all clients with the current client list on the current channel.

saveGraph

Save the current state: list of clients and list of connections, into the settings file mentioned when running spacebro

For example, run

spacebro --settings /path/to/my-settings-file.json

Connect some clients, add some connections, send a saveGraph event, and the state of the graph will be saved in this settings file.

Events

newClient

spacebro broadcasts a newClient event when a new connection is created, with the client name as client.name property value. Typically, you'd do on the client side:

spacebroClient.on('newClient', (data) => {
  console.log(`${data.client.name} has joined.`)
})

clients

spacebro broadcasts a clients event after a client registered or after receiving a getClients event.

data is an array of clients.

connections

spacebro broadcasts a connections event after a new connection is added or after receiving a getConnections event.

data is an array of connections in the schema descibed below:

{
  src: {
    clientName: 'myclient',
    eventName: 'outMedia'
  },
  tgt: {
    clientName: 'myiotherclient',
    eventName: 'inMedia'
  }
}

Troubleshooting

ping pong

Do not try to test with 'ping' and 'pong' events, those are reserved.

- `ping`. Fired when a ping packet is written out to the server.
- `pong`. Fired when a pong is received from the server.

source

Test

npm run test

Contribute

You can develop on spacebro, by running:

yarn dev

you can build with yarn build

We use galaxies names for our release name, listed here here. We are currently at Black Eye.

You can check the examples/ folder, as well as the spacebro-client examples for real life examples.

Please follow standard style conventions.