Outline.md

Problem

Background

This project is part of a larger project that aims to simplify robotics by making it simple and open source. One part of this open source initiative is making a web application that runs on the robot locally and allows you to visualize a number of different things.

Problem statement

The current web application is heavy and not easily modifiable. This makes the web application highly use case specific. To improve the speed and ease which new robotics coursework material is developed, we are developing a new web application that is modular using a plugin system that makes it easy to extend the web application to fit your needs.

System outline

Introduction

This is the outline for the new MBOT web app. The mbot web app will connect to the robot and provides a modular system to serve different web pages.

System overview

This system is build on top of "packages." A package is just a folder that contains the necessary files. A package will have a UUID that is used to reference the material in it. If you want to reach a webpage, then locate to the endpoint /packages//index.html. This will load the specified webpage.

The API

There is an API that can be used to get certain data for rendering the website.

The available endpoints are

-> /packages/list - Return a json containing all the current packages

-> /package/UUID/metadata - Get the meta data for a package

The package system

In /data/www/mbot, you can create packages. You create a package in the folder named UUID. This folder needs to have a metadata.json file. The folder will also need to contain an index.html which is the entry of the package.

metadata.json

metadata.json has the following format:

{
    "author":"package author",
    "name":"package name",
    "version":"package version"
}