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About Firefly Help

Firefly Help is an open source template for creating help content. It's used by Firefly and other Firefly-based applications.

What's in this template?

  • Reusable help content for Firefly UI components.
  • Source code, dependencies, and scripts needed to creates a single page application for viewing the help content.
  • Dynamically generate a PDF from the HTML pages used.

Dev Dependencies

  • Gradle 8.10 Gradle is an open source build automation system.

  • Node v18 Javascript interpreter for command line environment, used for development tools

  • HTMLDoc HTML to PDF generator.

Note: To avoid setting up a local development environment, you can use Docker. Instructions for Docker is here README-docker.md

Quick Start

This template is designed for multiple projects. However, firefly-help has only one project.
To list the projects, run gradle projects.

git clone https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/firefly-help

Clone this repository into firefly-help directory.
In the root directory, you can run:

gradle build

Builds the help application(s) to the build directory. The artifact is a zip file in build/dist directory.
Zip files are named in the format ${project}_help.zip, one for each project.

gradle run

Builds and launch the help application in the default browser.
If you have multiple projects, prepend run with the project's name, like this: gradle firefly:run

gradle install

Builds and installs the help application to an existing web server. This requires setting install_dir either via environment or as a property set on the command line, like this: gradle -Pinstall_dir=/var/www/html install

Learn More

File Structure

app/
   public/
     index.html
   src/
     toc/
       toc_creator.js        
html/
  ${project}/
    img/

app directory contains source code needed to create the Help application.
index.html is the default page hosting this application. toc stands for table of contents. toc_creator.js is where you define your table of content.

html directory contains help content. It is further divided into subdirectory to allow multiple projects. It is recommended to separate images into an img subdirectory

Small changes to this template

To make small changes to this template, create a github fork of this repository.
Remember, you are directly editing the template, any update to the base(firefly-help) may require merging on your end when you pull in new updates from base.

  • Edit index.html to decorate the page, like banner.
  • Add additional content to html
  • Update hmtl/firefly content as needed.
  • Edit app/src/toc/firefly_toc.js to add/remove content as needed.

Creating a new project from this template

To create your own project from this template, create a github fork of this repository.

  • (optional) Remove firefly project from build.gradle

  • Add your project to build.gradle

      project(':m_proj') {
      apply from: "${rootDir}/buildScript/help.gincl"
  }

  • Add the project to settings.properties

      include 'm_proj'

  • Place your HTML content here: html/m_proj

  • Create TOC for this project here: app/src/toc/m_proj_toc.js
    To use Firefly's content under html/firefly, link the HTML files to your TOC, or use predefined topics exported from app/src/toc/firefly_toc.js to assemble you own TOC.

    import {toc_visualization, toc_tables} from './firefly_toc';
export const m_proj_toc = [
    {id: 'm_topic', title: 'My Topic', href: 'm_proj/m_topic.html'},
    toc_visualization,
    toc_tables,
];

    There are many ways to create a custom TOC from existing topics.
    See below for an example.

  • Import the TOC and map it to your project name

    import m_proj from './m_proj_toc';
export function create(appName) {
    switch (appName) {
        case 'm_proj': 		return {toc:m_proj};
    }
}

To create multiple projects from this template, repeat the above steps, once for each project.

Adding Custom Variables

This template can consume variables declared in props as if they were declared locally in your JS files. Properties may come from environment, command line, or in your build file, like this:

ext.appConfig = {
    REACT_APP_my_var = 'Default value for this prop'
    environments {
        dev {
            REACT_APP_my_var = "Value if built with -Penv=dev"
        }
    }
}

Any properties starting with REACT_APP_ and can be used in your JavaScript code or in index.html.
For example, REACT_APP_my_var variable will be exposed in your JS as process.env.REACT_APP_my_var.
To use it in index.html, enclose the variable with %, like this:

<title>%REACT_APP_my_var%</title>

How to create Table of Content

First, let's define the data structure of TOC:

/**
 * @typedef [HelpItem] TOC
 */

/**
 * @typedef {object} HelpItem
 * @prop {string}   id      unique ID of the help item
 * @prop {string}   title   title of this item
 * @prop {string}   href    link to html content for this help item
 * @prop {string}   hidden  default true.  When true, entry will not be shown in the navigation tree.
 * @prop {object}   style   additional style to apply to this item
 * @prop [HelpItem] items   array of help items.  This is used to build the table of contents
 */

TOC is an array of HelpItem. HelpItem, similar to TreeNode in a tree data structure, contains information about the current help entry, with optional sub-entries as items. Using just these 2 data structures, you can completely customize your Table of Content.

- overview
- topic-1
  - item-1-1
  - sub-topic-1-2
    - item-1-2-1
    - item-1-2-2
  - item-1-3
- topic-2
  - item-2-1
  - item-2-2
- item-3

How to reuse existing Topics

TOC is a simple JavaScript object. There are many ways to manipulate the object. Below are just a few examples.

Given, from app/src/toc/firefly_toc.js:

export const toc_privacy = {
    id: 'privacy',
    title: 'IRSA Privacy Notice',
    href: 'firefly/privacy.html'
};

export const toc_user = {
    id: 'user',
    title: 'User Registration',
    href: 'firefly/user.html'
};

export const toc_tables = {
    id: 'tables',
    title: 'Tables',
    href: 'firefly/tables.html',
    items: [
        {
            id: 'tables.tableoptions',
            title: 'Table Options',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#tableoptions',
            hidden: true,
        },
        {
            id: 'tables.header',
            title: 'Table Header',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#header',
        },
        {
            id: 'tables.columns',
            title: 'Table Columns',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#columns',
        },
        {
            id: 'tables.filters',
            title: 'Table Filters',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#filters',
        },
        {
            id: 'tables.save',
            title: 'Saving Tables',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#save',
        },
        {
            id: 'tables.catalogs',
            title: 'Catalogs',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#catalogs',
        },
        {
            id: 'basics.catalogs',
            title: 'Catalogs',
            href: 'firefly/tables.html#catalogs',
             hidden: true,
        },
    ]
};

I want to use these predefined topics from Firefly to create my helloworld TOC.

import {toc_privacy, toc_user, toc_tables} from './firefly_toc';

export const toc_about = {
    id: 'about',
    title: 'About Hello World',
    href: 'helloworld/about.html'
};

const myToc = [toc_about, toc_tables, toc_user, toc_privacy];

This is straight forward. But, what if I need to add my additional project's specific content to toc_tables?

const myTableToc = {
    id: 'tables',
    title: 'Hello World Tables',
    href: 'helloworld/tables.html',         // notice this is pointing to my content
    items: [
        {
            id: 'helloworld.table_dd',
            title: 'Hello World: data definitions',
            href: 'helloworld/tables.html#table_dd',        // add a HelpItem before generic Firefly Help
        },
        ...toc_tables.items,
        {
            id: 'helloworld.searches',
            title: 'Example Searches',
            href: 'helloworld/example-searches.html',       // add some example searches after
        },
    ]
}