A C++ Qt-based desktop application for real-time activity monitoring
Newsroom is a Qt-based application designed for the desktop that uses a full newsroom paradigm--Stories, Reporters, Producers, Chyrons, Headlines, etc.--to construct a system for performing real-time monitoring of activities. Reporters cover "beats" (areas of their particular expertise) and file reports with Producers who then generate Headlines based on established formatting policies for Chyrons to display on the desktop.
Reporters are defined as plug-ins. Newsroom comes out of the box with Reporters designed to cover two "beats": Local files (e.g., log), and REST APIs, but additional Reporter types can easily be added.
This project was developed with, and tested under, Qt versions 5.4.2 and 5.6.2.
Newsroom itself does not have a dependency upon OpenSSL, however, the TeamCity9 Reporter plug-in will likely not function unless those libraries are available and Qt has been configured and built against them.
Future Reporters may have similar dependencies external to the main application in order to be useable.
Everything is based around a Story. All other elements--Reporters, Producers, Chyrons, etc.--exist to "cover" a Story. You need a Reporter who understands the Story's "beat" in order to cover it. Local text files and REST API Reporters are included; others can be created.
Stories can be grouped into Series. A Series is a collection of related Stories (e.g., TeamCity builders). Aside from being an organizing tool, Series maintain settings that will be applied to all Stories they are assigned. For example, as of this writing, the Dashboard "compact" settings are per-Series instead of global, meaning you can have Dashboards grouped by Series that are "compact" and others in other Series that are not.
Reporters only know how to file a text report about some recent activity on its assigned "beat". The Producer knows how to take that filed report and inject it into the system so the Chyron can display it.
The responsibility of displaying Headlines is relegated to Chyrons. Chyrons can display Headlines in one of many different "entry" and "exit" types, almost all of which involve motion and/or fading animation.
Headlines displayed by the Chyron can be locked to the top of the desktop Z-order so they are always visible. Additionally, under Windows, Headlines can also be "glued" to the desktop, so they are always at the bottom of the visible Z-order and will not raise, even if explicitly clicked on by the user.
A particular kind of Chyron "entry" type (which is really more of a grouping type) is the "Dashboard". This "entry" type will group one or more Chyron displays into a common group id, where each entry monitors a single activity. This type is handy for displaying a Series of related elements--TeamCity9 builds, Transmission torrents, etc.. "Dashboard" types can also be "compacted" to provide thousand-foot views of monitored activities for saving on screen space.
Most GUI items have descriptive tooltips to help you understand their function.
The system is currently functional, but should be considered a work-in-progress while I continue to tinker with it. There are some approaches I've taken with which I am not completely satisfied, and there are some additions I am planning to make (e.g., I don't like the available "entry" types for use with incremental log monitoring).
In other words, I'll try my best to provide a migration path, but don't be surprised if I change something later that might end up being incompatible with your established Stories.
Some things are not yet hooked up. For example, auto-start does not yet work.
I've not tweaked this for, or even compiled under, operating systems other than Windows so far. All development has taken place there to this point.
Run the main application, and then drop either a local text file, or a Web URL (assumed to be a REST API node), onto the main window. This will launch the "Add Story" dialog where you can configure the Reporter and other details about the Headlines that are generated for this Story.
Newsroom comes with one defined "Default" stylesheet. This is the stylesheet that is used for all Headlines displayed on the screen. You may modify this stylesheet, but you cannot delete, or place it in a lower-priority order. You may add new styles, each of which should have "trigger" keywords associated which will select them if any of those keywords appear in the Headline text. Trigger keywords are separated by commas, and are case-insensitive.
For example, for TeamCity Headlines, you might have a stylesheet defined that "triggers" if the one of the keywords "error, fail" appear in the report. Or perhaps one to be used if the word "hung" appears (indicating that a builder might be hung). Styles are in priority order in the list, with "Default" having the highest position. If you have one with a "finish" trigger ahead of one with "error", and both keywords appear in the same Headline text, the stylesheet for "finish" will be used and not "error". Plan your styles and their relationships to one another accordingly.
Series can be created by double-clicking on the "Default" series to rename it. There is always a "Default" Series to capture all newly added Stories, so renaming it will cause a new "Default" entry to appear. Stories can be dragged and dropped between Series, but each Story must belong to a Series (with new Stories automatically added to "Default").
Story positions within Series, and Series order relative to other Series, is important when starting Story coverage. Stories will begin coverage--and therefore, screen presence and position--based on the relative ordering within the Series tree, top to bottom. Depending upon how Chyrons are stacked by the internal LaneManager, you may need to re-order Story positions to achieve the desired layout based on the assigned "entry" type.
The following are some visual examples of the Newroom program in action. Because the included TextFile Reporter isn't every interesting beyond its possible Entry and Exit types, I'm only including screen shots of the TeamCity9 and YahooChartAPI Reporters included with the program.
This screen shot shows multiple TeamCity9 Reporters covering a number of build configurations using one of the Dashboard Entry types, with each related build configuration grouped within a single Dashboard group. The various Headline coloring corresponds to defined stylesheets associated with "trigger" keywords in the Headline text ("Changes", "Success", etc.):
This screen shot shows 32 TeamCity build configurations across three different TeamCity servers being monitored by TeamCity9 Reporters in the "compact" Dashboard mode. Note that, if the "detect progress" option is enabled, a progress bar appears on the compacted Headline:
Hovering the mouse pointer over any one of the "compacted" Headlines causes it to expand to full size for viewing. Leaving the Headline returns it to its compacted size.
NOTE: At some point during the week of 15 May 2017, Yahoo Financial officially discontinued the public Yahoo Chart API. This plug-in is now useless.
The YahooChartAPI Reporter uses the Yahoo Chart API URL (http://chartapi.finance.yahoo.com/instrument/1.0) to provide minute-by-minute updates on specified New York Stock Exchange stock symbols. The default symbol is "^dji", which provides Dow Jones Industrial Average information, but you can specify a stock symbol of your choice.
This screen shot shows the "^dji" (Dow Jones Industrial Average) and "msft" (Microsoft) symbols displayed using the default, text-based Headline display after the market has closed:
In its parameters, the YahooChartAPI Reporter gives you the option to enable chart drawing alongside text information (the blue line is the day's opening; the dashed grey line is the "previous close" point of the last trading day):
(As an aside, this custom drawing on a Headline is enabled by the new ReporterDraw() functionality of the IReporter2 interface, which allows the Reporter to completely take over responsibility for the Headline display.)
When the market is closed, the chart mode will also indicate this:
Transmission is a torrent client which usually runs under Linux. A Reporter is available for monitoring the state of torrents currently queued in a Transmission instance.
In the image below, the outermost ellipse indicates the total amount of the torrent that has been downloaded. Subsequent inner ellipses indicate the sharing ratio of the torrent. Each concentric inner ellipse represents a sharing ratio of 1.0 (100%):
As of this writing, Transmission lacks an actual REST interface, so the Transmission Reporter includes a "helper", written in Python, that will provide a listing of the current Transmission queue so Newsroom can consume and display its state. I've also included an init.d system file for integrating the "helper" as a Linux service.
You're reading it now.