Pop-Up in Meilix Generator

Meilix Generator has fields which the user needs to fill up. There are fields for the required information and for customization process too. This solves the problems and helping user to know about the requirement of each field. We implemented a pop-menu which appears and tell about that particular field.

We will here describe only the implementation of email pop-up.

type="text/javascript">  
function hideDiv(){
    document.getElementsByClassName('custom-menu-cont')[0].classList.toggle('hidden')
}
document.addEventListener("click", hideDiv);
function noti()
{
	alert("Email is used to mail user the link to the build ISO");
}

We have embedded a javascript in html file.
Function hideDiv contains document.getElementsByClassName() method.

The getElementsByClassName() method returns a collection of all elements in the document with the specified class name.

Then we have a document.addEventListener() method with click and hideDiv function as the parameters. It also contain a function noti which get toggle at the time of click and display the alert message. hideDiv closes the toggle when clicked on the cross button again.

<label class="heading" id="label" for="email">Email *&ensp;<img src="{{ url_for('static', filename='alert.jpg') }}" height="20" width="20" onclick="noti()"></label>

 

We implemented a question mark after the email line which when clicked showed the following message on the webapp.

This will help user to know the requirement of the particular field.

Through the help of the required function and implementation of the button, we can embedded a help icon which pop-up to give required option present in the webapp.

These are different pop-ups that are currently present in the webapp. User can know about the particular field by clicking on any of the pop-up.

Resources

  1. HTML getElementsByClassName(): https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_document_getelementsbyclassname.asp
  2. Bootstrap 4 Form: https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap4/bootstrap_forms.asp

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Creating an Infobox for Mobile View Using Angular in Susper

In Susper, the Information and Analytics boxes disappeared for widths smaller than 1100px, since they were too big to fit in the existing page layout.
In Laptop view:

In Mobile view:

Hence we decided to design a new Info-cum-Analytics box for mobile devices, where the Analytics are displayed only if the ‘Show Analytics’ button is clicked and they are hidden on clicking the ‘Hide Analytics’ button.

The following is the html code for the Infobox:

<div class=“combo-box”>
<appinfobox></app-infobox>
<button class=“btn” id=“toggle-button” (click)=“BoxToggle()” type=“button” datatoggle=“collapse” datatarget=“#statbox” ariaexpanded=“false” ariacontrols=“collapseExample”>
{{boxMessage}} Analytics
</button>
<appstatsbox class=“collapse” id=“statbox”></app-statsbox>
</div>

We can make the following observations:

  • The combo box has both the Info and the Stats box, in addition to a button, which toggles the display status of the Analytics box.
  • To display the appropriate message on the button, we have a special function called BoxToggle() which sets the value of boxMessage()
  • The data-toggle attribute of the button has been set to collapse and the data-target is statbox
  • The statsbox has the class collapse, so that it collapses on clicking on the Toggle button.

The typescript code is as follows:

BoxToggle() {
if (this.boxMessage === ‘Show’) {
this.boxMessage = ‘Hide’;
} else {
this.boxMessage = ‘Show’;
}
}

This code thus effectively toggles between the messages Show and Hide, if the button is clicked when the message says Show, it changes to Hide and vice-versa

The CSS code:

@media screen and (min-width:768px) {
div.combo-box {
display: none;
}
}

The css code ensures that this combo-box is displayed only for widths less than 768px (only mobile and tablet screens).

To view the entire code you can check results.component.html and results.component.css in the Susper repository.

References

  1. W3 Schools for Collapsible buttons and their implementation: https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_collapse.asp
  2. Official Bootstrap documentation for collapsible buttons: https://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/components/collapse/
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Making a Sticky Top Navigation bar for Susper using Angular

A lot of websites, require a top navigation bar that sticks to the top, irrespective of the screen dimension size. This blog deals with how the top navigation bar was made sticky in Susper.

  1. Using the correct Bootstrap classes. Notice the code enveloping the navigation bar.

<nav class=“top-nav navbar navbar-static-top navbar-default”>

class=“container-fluid”>

class=“navbar-header” id=“navcontainer”>

</div>
</div>
</nav>

Points to note:

  • Using navbar and navbar-default creates a standard gray navigation bar.
  • Using navbar-static-top makes the navbar stick only to the top of the page and disappear on scrolling down.
  • Using container-fluid creates a container for the contents of the navbar with wide margins
  1.  Now we also need to write some personalized CSS code. Notice the classes navcontainer and  top-nav. This is the CSS code for these classes:

.top-nav{
margin-bottom: 0;
}
#navcontainer {
height: 65px;
width: 100vw;
}#navcontainer ul {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style-type: none;
}

Points to note:

  • Margin and padding can be set according to how the navbar should look. Click here to know the difference between margins and padding.
  • The height has been customized to 65px in Susper, with a width of 100vw(entire viewpost width).
  1. Lastly, if your navigation bar is inside the body tag, remember that by default, body has a top margin of 57 px. As a result you may see an extra white space on top of your navigation bar. To remove this:
  • Move the navigation bar code out of the body tag. If you can’t then,
  • Place your navigation bar in a container ( resultContainer on the Susper result page) and write this in your CSS file.

.resultContainer{
margin-top: -57px;
}

References:

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Making Customized and Mobile Responsive Drop-down Menus in Susper using Angular

In  Susper, the drop-down menu is customized with colorful search icons and we wanted to maintain the same menu for mobile screens too, however the drop-down menu disappeared for all screens with width less than 767px. This blog can be used to learn how to create css classes for such drop-down menus without using any bootstrap.
This is how the issue was solved.

  1. Replacing standard bootstrap classes : The drop-down menu blocks had a source code as follows:

class=“dropdown-menu”>

class=“row”>

class=“col-sm-4”>

class=“block”>

</div>
</div>

Using col-sm-4 will do the following

  • For widths greater than 767px: Divide each row into four equally sized columns.
  • For widths smaller than 767px: Stack all the columns on top of each other.

Since the drop-down menu’s design was to remain intact, I made the following changes:

  • Replace row with menu-row
  • Replace col-sm-4 with menu-item

Now I wrote personalized css for these classes.

.menu-row{
width: 267px;
gridtemplatecolumns: 1fr 1fr 1fr;
background-color: white;
}
.menu-item{
display: inlineblock;
width: 86px;
}
  • Width: It is used to set the width of the div class, each row now has a width of 267px, with each column in it having a width of 86px.
  • Grid-template-columns: It is used to layout the structure of the template, here 1fr 1fr 1fr represents that there will be three columns in a row.
  • Display: The display is set to inline block to overwrite the default property of the div element to start in a new line.
  1. Custom css for small screens : In standard bootstrap, for screen sizes less than 767px, dropdown class has properties like transparent background, no border etc. that need to be over written. So we add a new id for the div tag as shown:

<div id=“small-drop” class=“dropdown-menu”>

/** Now we add css for it, as shown: **/
@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {
#small-drop{
position: absolute;
background-color: white;
border: 1px solid #cccccc;
right: -38px;
left: auto;
}

  • Position : absolute is used to make sure all our values are absolute and not relative to the higher div hierarchically
  • Border: The values for the border represent the following respectively: Thickness, Style and Color.
  • Auto: Here the value auto for left signifies that there is no fixed value for the left margin, it can take the default value

References:

  1. For working of grids in Bootstrap: https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_grid_examples.asp
  2. A useful article for difference between id and class: https://css-tricks.com/the-difference-between-id-and-class

 

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Making Autocomplete Box Compatible with the Search Bar using Angular in Susper

A major problem in Susper was that we were using the same components on different pages, with different styling properties. A major issue was that the Autocomplete box was not properly aligned in the index page and looked like this:

This was happening because the autocomplete box width was set for 634 px, a width perfect for the search bar in the results page. The index page had a search bar of width 534 px, and the autocomplete box was too large for that.
Here is how the issue was solved:

  1. Changing the suggestion box html code:

id=“sug-box” class=“suggestion-box” *ngIf=”results.length0”>

</div>

The code uses *ngIf which is why setting the autocomplete box width using the typescript files becomes impossible. *ngIf does not load the component into the DOM until there are results, hence we didnot have the autocomplete box in the DOM until after the query was typed in the search bar. That was why we could not set its width, hence it was decided to remove this attribute. Using the ‘hidecomponent emitter’ is a better option here (used in the typescript file).

@Output() hidecomponent: EventEmitter<any> = new EventEmitter<any>();
if (this.results.length === 0) {
this.hidecomponent.emit(1);
} else {
this.hidecomponent.emit(0);
}

See autocomplete.component.ts for the complete code.

  1. It is now required to dynamically change the id of the suggestion-box depending on the page it is on, and apply the correct CSS.

Here is the html code:

<div [id]=”getID()” class=“suggestion-box” *ngIf=“results”>

The id of the suggestion box will now depend on the value returned from the function getID(), defined as follows:

getID() {
if ( this.route.url.toString() === ‘/’) {
  return ‘index-sug-box’;
} else {
  return ‘sug-box’
}
}
  • We first check if the route url is simply ‘/’ (which implies it is in the index page).
  • If yes the id is set to index-sug-box otherwise to sug-box.

Now we can write extra CSS properties for the index-sug-box id as follows:

#index-sug-box{
width: 586px;
}

References:

  1. For basic javascript functions: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_functions.asp
  2. To understand components in Angular: https://angular.io/api/core/Component

 

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Designing a Remote Laboratory with PSLab using Python Flask Framework

In the introductory post about remote laboratories, a general set of tools to create a framework and handle its various aspects was also introduced. In this blog post, we will explore the implementation of several aspects of the backend app designed with python-flask, and the frontend based on EmberJS. A clear separation of the frontend and backend facilitates minimal disruption of either sections due to the other.

Implementing API methods in Python-Flask

In the Flask web server, page requests are handled via ‘routes’ , which are essentially URLs linked to a python function. Routes are also capable of handling payloads such as POST data, and various return types are also supported.

We shall use an example to demonstrate how a Sign-Up request sent from the sign-up form in the remote lab frontend for PSLab is handled.

@app.route('/signUp',methods=['POST'])
def signUp():
	"""Sign Up for Virtual Lab

	POST: Submit sign-up parameters. The following must be present:
	 inputName : The name of your account. does not need to be unique
	 inputEmail : e-mail ID used for login . must be unique.
	 inputPassword: password .
	Returns HTTP 404 when data does not exist.
	"""
	# read the posted values from the UI
	_name = request.form['inputName']
	_email = request.form['inputEmail']
	_password = request.form['inputPassword']

	# validate the received values
	if _name and _email and _password:
		_hashed_password = generate_password_hash(_password)
		newUser = User(_email, _name,_hashed_password)
		try:
			db.session.add(newUser)
			db.session.commit()
			return json.dumps({'status':True,'message':'User %s created successfully. e-mail:%s !'%(_name,_email)})
		except Exception as exc:
			reason = str(exc)
			return json.dumps({'status':False,'message':str(reason)})

 

In this example, the first line indicates that all URL requests made to <domain:port>/signUp will be handled by the function signUp . During development, we host the server on localhost, and use the default PORT number 8000, so sign-up forms must be submitted to 127.0.0.1:8000/signUp .

For deployment on a globally accessible server, a machine with a static IP, and a DNS record must be used. An example for such a deployment would be the heroku subdomain where pslab-remote is automatically deployed ; https://pslab-stage.herokuapp.com/signUp

A closer look at the above example will tell you that POST data can be accessed via the request.form dictionary, and that the sign-up routine requires inputName,inputEmail, and inputPassword. A password hash is generated before writing the parameters to the database.

Testing API methods using the Postman chrome extension

The route described in the above example requires form data to be submitted along with the URL, and we will use a rather handy developer tool called Postman to help us do this. In the frontend apps , AJAX methods are usually employed to do such tasks as well as handle the response from the server.

 

The above screenshot shows Postman being used to submit form data to /signUp on our API server running at localhost:8000 . The fields inputName, inputDescription, and inputPassword are also posted along with it.

In the bottom section, one can see that the server returned a positive status variable, as well as a descriptive message.

Submitting the sign up form via an Ember controller.
  • Setting up a template
    We first need to set up a template that we shall call sign-up.hbs , and add the following form to it. This form contains the details essential for signing up , and its submit action is linked to an action called `signMeUp` . This action will be defined in the controller which we shall explore shortly

<form class="form-signin" {{action "signMeUp" on="submit"}} >
        <label for="inputName" class="sr-only">Your Name</label>
        {{input value=inputName type="text" name="inputName" id="inputName" class="form-control" placeholder="name" required=true autofocus=true}}
        <label for="inputEmail" class="sr-only">Email address</label>
        {{input value=inputEmail type="email" name="inputEmail" id="inputEmail" class="form-control" placeholder="Email address" required=true autofocus=true}}
        <label for="inputPassword" class="sr-only">Password</label>
        {{input value=inputPassword type="password" name="inputPassword" id="inputPassword" class="form-control" placeholder="Password" required=true autofocus=true}}
         
        <button class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block" type="submit">Sign Up</button>
</form>

 

  • Defining the controller
    The controller contains the actions and variables that the template links to. In this case, we require an action called signMeUp. The success, failure, and error handlers are hidden for clarity.

import Ember from 'ember';
export default Ember.Controller.extend({
  actions:{
    signMeUp() {
        var request = Ember.$.post("/signUp",
 this.getProperties("inputName","inputEmail","inputPassword"),this,'json');
        request.then(this.success.bind(this), this.failure.bind(this),
this.error.bind(this));
    },
  },
});

The signMeUp action submits the contents of the form to the signUp route on the API server, and the results are handled by functions called success, failure, or error depending on the type of response from the backend server.

Resources:

 

Continue ReadingDesigning a Remote Laboratory with PSLab using Python Flask Framework

Implementing Search Bar Using GitHub API In Yaydoc CI

In Yaydoc’s, documentation will be generated by typing the URL of the git repository to the input box from where user can generate documentation for any public repository, they can see the preview and if they have access, they can push the documentation to the github pages on one click. But In Yaydoc CI user can register the repository only if he has access to the specific repository, so I decided to show the list to the repository where user can select from the list but then it also has one problem that Github won’t give us all the user repository data in one api hit and then I made a search bar in which user can search repository and can register to the Yaydoc CI.

var search = function () {
  var username = $("#orgs").val().split(":")[1];
  const searchBarInput = $("#search_bar");
  const searchResultDiv = $("#search_result");

  searchResultDiv.empty();
  if (searchBarInput.val() === "") {
    searchResultDiv.append('<p class="text-center">Please enter the repository name<p>');
    return;
  }

  searchResultDiv.append('<p class="text-center">Fetching data<p>');

  $.get(`https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=user:${username}+fork:true+${searchBarInput.val()}`, function (result) {
    searchResultDiv.empty();
    if (result.total_count === 0) {
      searchResultDiv.append(`<p class="text-center">No results found<p>`);
      styles.disableButton("btnRegister");
    } else {
      styles.disableButton("btnRegister");
      var select = '<label class="control-label" for="repositories">Repositories:</label>';
      select += '<select class="form-control" id="repositories" name="repository" required>';
      select += `<option value="">Please select</option>`;
      result.items.forEach(function (x){
        select += `<option value="${x.full_name}">${x.full_name}</option>`;
      });
      select += '</select>';
      searchResultDiv.append(select);
    }
  });
};

$(function() {
  $("#search").click(function () {
    search();
  });
});

In the above snippet I have defined search function which will get executed when user clicks the search button. The search function will get the search query from input box, if the search query is empty it’ll show the message as “Please enter repository name”, if it is not empty it’ll hit the GitHub API to fetch user repositories. If the GitHub returns empty array it’ll show “No results found”. In between searching time “Fetching data” will be shown.

$('#search_bar').on('keyup keypress', function(e) {
    var keyCode = e.keyCode || e.which;
    if (keyCode === 13) {
      search();
    }
  });

  $('#ci_register').on('keyup keypress', function(e) {
    var keyCode = e.keyCode || e.which;
    if (keyCode === 13) {
      e.preventDefault();
      return false;
    }
  });

Still we faced some problem, like on click enter button form is automatically submitting. So I’m registering event listener. In that listener I’m checking whether the key code is 13 or not. Key code 13 represent enter key, so if the key code is 13 then i’ll prevent the form from submitting. You can see the working of the search bar in the Yaydoc CI.

Resources:

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Adding tip to drop downs in Susper using CSS in Angular

To create simple drop downs using twitter bootstrap, it is fairly easy for developers. The issue faced in Susper, however, was to add a tip on the top over such dropdowns similar to Google:

This is how it looks finally, in Susper, with a tip over the standard rectangular drop-down:

This is how it was done:

  1. First, make sure you have designed your drop-down according to your requirements, added the desired height, width and padding. These were the specifications used in Susper’s drop-down.

.dropdown-menu{
height: 500px;
width: 327px;
padding: 28px;
}
  1. Next add the following code to your drop-down class css:

.dropdown-menu:before {
position: absolute;
top: -7px;
right: 19px;
display: inlineblock;
border-right: 7px solid transparent;
border-bottom: 7px solid #ccc;
border-left: 7px solid transparent;
border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
content: ;
}
.dropdown-menu:after {
position: absolute;
top: -5px;
right: 20px;
display: inlineblock;
border-right: 6px solid transparent;
border-bottom: 6px solid #ffffff;
border-left: 6px solid transparent;
content: ;
}

In css, :before inserts the style before any other html, whereas :after inserts the style after the html is loaded. Some of the parameters are explained here:

  • Top: can be used to change the position of the menu tip vertically, according to the position of your button and menu.
  • Right: can be used to change the position of the menu tip horizontally, so that it can be positioned used below the menu icon.
  • Position : absolute is used to make sure all our values are absolute and not relative to the higher div hierarchically
  • Border: All border attributes are used to specify border thickness, color and transparency before and after, which collectively gives the effect of a tip for the drop down.
  • Content : This value is set to a blank string ‘’, because otherwise none of our changes will be visible, since the divs will have no space allocated to them.

Resources

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Designing A Virtual Laboratory With PSLab

What is a virtual laboratory

A virtual lab interface gives students remote access to equipment in laboratories via the Internet without having to be physically present near the equipment. The idea is that lab experiments can be made accessible to a larger audience which may not have the resources to set up the experiment at their place. Another use-case scenario is that the experiment setup must be placed at a specific location which may not be habitable.

The PSLab’s capabilities can be increased significantly by setting up a framework that allows remote data acquisition and control. It can then be deployed in various test and measurement scenarios such as an interactive environment monitoring station.

What resources will be needed for such a setup

The proposed virtual lab will be platform independent, and should be able to run in web-browsers. This necessitates the presence of a lightweight web-server software running on the hardware to which the PSLab is connected. The web-server must have a framework that must handle multiple connections, and allow control access to only authenticated users.

Proposed design for the backend

The backend framework must be able to handle the following tasks:

  • Communicate with the PSLab hardware attached to the server
  • Host lightweight web-pages with various visual aids
  • Support an authentication framework via a database that contains user credentials
  • Reply with JSON data after executing single commands on the PSLab
  • Execute remotely received python scripts, and relay the HTML formatted output. This should include plots

Proposed design for the frontend

  • Responsive, aesthetic layouts and widget styles.
  • Essential utilities such as Sign-up and Sign-in pages.
  • Embedded plots with basic zooming and panning facilities.
  • Embedded code-editor with syntax highlighting
  • WIdgets to submit the code to the server for execution, and subsequent display of received response.

A selection of tools that can assist with this project, and the purpose they will serve:

Backend

  • The Python communication library for the PSLab
  • FLASK: ‘Flask is a BSD Licensed microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions.’   . It can handle concurrent requests, and will be well suited to serve as our web server
  • MySQL: This is a database management utility that can be used to store user credentials, user scripts, queues etc
  • WerkZeug: The utilities to create and check password hashes are essential for exchanging passwords via the database
  • Json: For relaying measurement results to the client
  • Gunicorn + Nginx: Will be used when more scalable deployment is needed, and the built-in webserver of Flask is unable to handle the load.

Frontend

  • Bootstrap-css: For neatly formatted, responsive UIs
  • Jqplot: A versatile and expandable js based plotting library
  • Ace code editor: A browser based code editor with syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and other user-friendly features. Written in JS
  • Display documentation:  These can be generated server side from Markdown files using Jekyll. Several documentation files are already available from the pslab-desktop-apps, and can be reused after replacing the screenshot images only.

Flow Diagram

Recommended Reading

[1]: Tutorial series  for creating a web-app using python-flask and mysql. This tutorial will be extensively followed for creating the virtual-lab setup.

[2]: Introduction to the Virtual Labs initiative by the Govt of India

[3]: Virtual labs at IIT Kanpur

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Implementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end

In Susper, we have implemented a suggestion box for our input box. This was done using Yacy suggest API. This is how the box looks:

In this blog, let us see how to implement such a box using html, css, twitter-bootstrap and typescript. You can also check the code at the Susper repository.

The html code is simple and straightforward:

 

class=“suggestion-box” *ngIf=“results”>

</div>

A few points to notice :

  • *ngIf=”results” ensures that the box is displayed only when it has suggestions to display and not otherwise
  • The [routerLink] and [queryParams] attributes together link every result to the search page, with the correct query.

This is the css code :

a {
text-decoration: none;
}.suggestions {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 17px;
margin-left: 2.4%;
}.query-suggestions:hover {
background: #E3E3E3;
}.suggestion-box{
width: 635.2px;
max-width: 100%;
border: 1px solid rgba(150,150,150,0.3);
background-color: white;
margin-left: -25.7px;
position: absolute;
boxshadow: 0px 0.2px 0px;
}

A few points to notice again:

    • Box-shadow: This gives the drop up a shadow effect, which looks really nice, the first 3 parameters are for dimensions (X-offset, Y-offset, Blur). The rgba specifies color, with parameters as (red-component, green-component, blue-component, opacity).
    • Text-decoration: This attribute is used to add/remove decoration like underline for links.
    • Font-family: The font-family mentioned here is Arial, if Arial is unavailable sans-serif is used.

In the typescript file, there are two major tasks:

  1. Splice the results if greater than five. A neat suggestion-box should have a maximum of five results, hence we splice the results:

this.results.concat(res[0]);
if ( this.results.length > 5) {
this.results = this.results.splice (0, 5);
  1. Hide the suggestion-box if there are no suggestions from the API:
@Output() hidecomponent: EventEmitter<any> = new EventEmitter<any>();

this.query$.subscribe( query => {
if (query) {
this.autocompleteservice.getsearchresults(query).subscribe(res => {
if (res) {
this.results = res[1];
if (this.results.length === 0) {
this.hidecomponent.emit(1);
} else {
this.hidecomponent.emit(0);
}

If you want a more elaborate picture, you can view the entire html, css and typescript files of the auto-complete component.

This tutorial, http://4dev.tech/2016/03/tutorial-creating-an-angular2-autocomplete/ is very useful in case you want to implement auto complete suggestion feature from scratch.

In addition, this stack overflow thread has some interesting insights too: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35881815/implementing-autocomplete-for-angular2

Continue ReadingImplementing a suggestion box in Susper Angular JS Front-end