Writing your first application

A Netbeast application allows you to control how devices interact each other. With Netbeast, you don't have to take care about wich brand or technology devices are using, you only need to say what topic you want to control (lights, sound, sensors...) and the value you want to give them (color, power, track...)

In this section we are going to explain how to create apps to run on the Netbeast dashboard. Here you will see a basic example of applications and how it is made.

Fast mode – scaffolding

Let's start.

netbeast new myapp

That will create a new folder named myapp with the basic structure of a Netbeast application.

Run the following code:

cd myapp
npm install # by default, dependencies are not included
node index.js --port 3000

And you're done! You can now access your application under http://localhost:3000.

It's time to open your favorite editor and start developing.

Step by step

Anatomy of a Netbeast application

Every Netbeast app is a npm package. To understand how apps work we will create an application from scratch and learn about all its components.

First off, open a terminal and type:

mkdir myapp
cd myapp

Now open on the myapp folder your favourite editor.

A basic Netbeast app looks like this:

.
├── index.html
├── node_modules
│   ├── express
│   └── minimist
├── package.json
└── server.js

The configuration file - package.json

npm uses package.json to maintain a package and check for dependencies. It's also useful to create development workflow.

Netbeast will make use of this file to reduce the overhead of configuration needed to get up and running. It will look for the main field to launch the app. Create such file and copy and add the following content into it:

{
    "name":"myapp",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "My very first Netbeast application.",
    "main": "server.js",
    "dependencies": {
        "express": "^4.12.3",
        "minimist":"^1.1.0"
    },
    "devDependencies":{},
    "scripts":{
        "test":"node server.js --port 31416",
        "start": "node server.js"
    },
    "keywords": [ "iot","netbeast","app"],
    "author": "[email protected]",
    "license": "GPL 2",
}

You can also create package.json using npm! Open a terminal and type:

npm init    # fill the gaps

The backend - server.js

We specified in the package that server.jsis our main file. Now we have to create a HTTP server to run the app. There's a lot of incredible things that you can do combining node.js and express but to keep it simple just copy and paste the following code into server.js:

#!/usr/bin/env node

/* Requires node.js libraries */
var express = require('express')
var app = express()

// Netbeast apps must accept the port to launch a HTTP server.
var argv = require('minimist')(process.argv.slice(2))
port = argv.port || 31416

if(isNaN(port)) {
    console.log("Port \"%s\" is not a number.", port)
    process.kill(1)
}

app.use(express.static(__dirname))

var server = app.listen(port, function () {
  console.log('Example app listening at http://%s:%s',
      server.address().address,
      server.address().port)
})

See the shebang? (It is the first line of the script #!/usr/bin/env node) It tells Netbeast which interpreter to use when launching an app. As a general rule, or when absent, the Dashboard will run a node process, but you could tweak this to create python apps, scripts or run native code.

main has to be an executable file. Make sure it has the appropriate permissions:

chmod +x server.js

As you can see in the code, the server must accept the port by parameter, that's so that Netbeast can open the app.

To achieve that we use minimist, but there are other command parsers available such as commander. Using minimist, you just need the following lines:

var argv = require('minimist')(process.argv.slice(2))
port = argv.port || 31416

We mentioned express before. It's a http node.js lightweight framework.

You will need both packages for the app to work. Installing them with npm will include them in the node_modules folder. To do so, run:

npm install express minimist --save

The frontend - index.html

The frontend to our web application will be a simple html file. Create a file called index.html and include the following as its content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My first Netbeast app</title>
</head>
<style type="text/css">
    body {
        font-family: arial;
    }
</style>
<body>
    <h1>
        Hello Netbeast community! <a style="color: red">&#9829;</a>
    </h1>
</body>
</html>

Strictly speaking, applications don't need a UI. You can use other ways to interact with the user such as push notifications. Plugins are a special kind of apps that may not have an interface.

Wrap up - launching our application

Netbeast Dashboard clones or downloads apps to a _apps folder relative to its root. Move apps there for them to be listed on installed apps or installed plugins.

mv your-app <DASHBOARD_PATH>/_apps

If you installed the dashboard with npm install -g netbeast-cli they are often installed under /usr/local/lib/node or /usr/local/lib/node_modules in *nix systems. In windows you can try C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node_modules.

Node-red, Padjs and Light-control installed. The rest of apps are native to the Dashboard

Find your app and click over it to get it running.

Your first application