
Show HN: Turn your GitHub Gist into a live dashboard - kantord
https://github.com/kantord/just-dashboard
======
ryannevius
This is pretty neat...but is "dashboard" the proper descriptor here? I was
expecting something completely different, when I clicked the link. Perhaps
"turn your Gist into interactive charts" would be more appropriate?

~~~
kantord
The example in the README is very simplistic, but in principle you can add
many different charts in relatively complex layouts, to show all your
different KPIs, etc. For now, you only have a few components but I do plan to
add more. Tables, tabbed containers etc. Plus I want to add variable support.

Here's another example that is just a slightly more complex:
[http://bottoml.in/e/kantord/57ec4e9533fcc91f8d413cc760fd9bcd](http://bottoml.in/e/kantord/57ec4e9533fcc91f8d413cc760fd9bcd)

And here's the source:
[https://gist.github.com/kantord/57ec4e9533fcc91f8d413cc760fd...](https://gist.github.com/kantord/57ec4e9533fcc91f8d413cc760fd9bcd)

This example uses JSON format instead of YAML though.

~~~
neurotrace
This is really cool but I still agree with ryannevius. Interactive charts
would be more accurate. When I think dashboard, I think of a live feed of data
with various tools for analyzing it.

~~~
fiatjaf
I think of charts with data coming from different places, which is exactly
what this does.

------
boffinism
Is it really a 'live' dashboard if it's reading data from a static gist file?

~~~
SnacksOnAPlane
It looks like it doesn't have to read data from a static gist file. It can
read from any JSON source, and you can just have the formatting data in the
gist.

------
fiatjaf
I was thinking: "oh, this is the kind of product I wanted to create when I
first made [https://github.com/fiatjaf/jq-web](https://github.com/fiatjaf/jq-
web) ", then I kept reading and found the following line: "you can use jq
queries in your YAML file".

Turns out it is using my jq/emscripten wrapper. Pure magic of the destiny.

~~~
kantord
Thanks for creating jq-web :-) Without jq-web I would probably never even have
started building this.

By the way I'm also working on a Javascript jq port. The main reason I'm doing
that is that I want to reduce file size. Here's the repo in case you want to
take a look at it. [https://github.com/kantord/jq-in-the-
browser](https://github.com/kantord/jq-in-the-browser)

~~~
fiatjaf
Amazing.

I initially didn't think it would be as powerful as jq. I've seen many people
claiming to be doing "jq in Javascript", but they were only implementing the
path searching part. Yours is truly amazing, it implements all the filters and
the quirks of | syntax. I'll watch it.

About the jq-web size, it is greatly reduced in the minified version, but much
better is the WASM version, not much for the size, but for the speed. Things
are probably 10x or more faster there.

------
conquistadog
I'd like to run a backend. What's the setup?

(Couldn't find that in the docs; please forgive me if I missed it.)

~~~
kantord
Good point. I have added this section to README.md:
[https://github.com/kantord/just-
dashboard/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/kantord/just-
dashboard/blob/master/README.md#using-your-own-backend) Do you think this is a
good explanation? I do plan to create an example project for this though.

~~~
masukomi
> Do you think this is a good explanation?

no. I think the question is more "how do i replicate the stuff going on at
[http://bottoml.in/e/](http://bottoml.in/e/) so that i can have these show up
under my domain" and that little code snippet falls very short.

it was also my first question when i looked at it, and the lack of answer part
of why i wandered off.

~~~
kantord
Thanks for your comment. I'll think of a way of improving the documentation
accordingly.

Actually, that code snippet is pretty much what's going on at
[https://bottoml.in/e/](https://bottoml.in/e/). There are 2 things I've
removed from the example code because I thought they were irrelevant: 1)
Loading GitHub Gists through their API 2) A code snippet that makes it
possible to host single page apps on GitHub Pages.

I thought both of those things would be irrelevant because most probably you
don't need either if you have your own backend.

In case you do need that code it's here:
[https://github.com/kantord/bottoml.in-e/blob/master/src/inde...](https://github.com/kantord/bottoml.in-e/blob/master/src/index.js)

------
rusbus
This is great! I've looking for a nice way to have interactive charts on my
blog. I used Plotly but quickly discovered that they only support 500 views
per day. Ended up just having pngs which isn't ideal

~~~
kantord
If you are only looking to embed charts in your blog you might be better off
just using billboard.js directly
[https://naver.github.io/billboard.js/](https://naver.github.io/billboard.js/)

That is what I used to create this project :-) Of course that only works if
you have access to the source code / can embed your own code/dependencies
somehow.

It is possible to embed visualizations using just-dashboard too, but you don't
necessarily need to do that if you only need a pie chart on your blog or
whatnot.

I think my project is more useful for quickly creating standalone shareable
data oriented pages. Of course I don't want to discourage you from using my
own project, I'm just suggesting an alternative. Nevertheless, improving
embed-ability is a low-hanging fruit so I'll probably work in that.

------
domoritz
This looks similar to [http://visdown.com/](http://visdown.com/).

~~~
kantord
WOW This looks amazing! Thanks for sharing it.

------
iDemonix
I think dashboard is a bit of a misnomer for what this produces.

------
O_H_E
Very nice

