Dotlet reborn

Dotlet is a web app that produces a dot plot representing the alignment of two protein/nucleotide sequences.

It is a pure client-side Javascript application written with React.

History

The original app was written in Java by Marco Pagni and Thomas Junier (Vital-IT). Java applets are no more supported by modern web browsers, so it has to be rewritten with a more modern design, new technologies, and hopefully performance improvements.

Original app: https://myhits.sib.swiss/cgi-bin/dotlet

Archive Java source files: https://github.com/sib-swiss/dotlet

Publication: Bioinformatics, 2000 16(2):178-179

Vital-IT, 2016 - Julien Delafontaine (https://github.com/jdelafon)

Technology

Started from Kriasoft's react-static-boilerplate:

• React - redux
• Webpack - babel - browsersync - hot loader
• Material Design
• CSS modules

Build from source

Install node.js and npm, then from the root directory, run

npm install
node run build [--release]

Start the test server

node run start [--release]

Run tests

npm run test[:watch]

Deploy in production

rm -rf public/dist/*
node run build --release
scp -r public/* <DESTINATION>

where <DESTINATION> is the DocumentRoot in your server configuration.

Structure

/

• run.js: Node tasks and some global config.
• main.js: The main call to ReactDOM.render and binds the router.
• webpack.config.js: Build configuration.
• package.json: Project config file. Lists JS dependencies to be installed with npm install in /node_modules. Lists npm run <action> aliases, such as npm run test:watch.

/public

• Everything that is to be copied for distribution. .ejs files get compiled to html/xml. In particular, don't try to edit the classic index.html, but index.ejs instead.
• /dist: bundled JS with all dependencies and inlined assets. If some assets are over some size limit, they appear outside of the bundle.

/pages: Routes. Only home is actually used in this project.

/node_modules: JS dependencies, automatically generated by npm install.

/core: Things you don't want to touch.

/components

• /actions: Redux reducers and action creators.
• /common: Common helper functions.
• /constants: Common variable definitions, to avoid typos.
• /DensityPanel: The part showing the scores density as a bar chart.
• /DotterPanel: The main dot plot canvas.
• /GreyScale: All what concerns the scaling of grey shades.
• /InfoPanel: The summary showing the currently inspected position and score.
• /InputPanel: The top menu with input fields.
• /Layout: MDL layout structure. Header and footer.
• /TwoSeqsPanel: The bottom part showing the currently inspected alignment.
• /utils: Helper components.