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Utilities for JavaScript on Sense

This package serves two purposes. First, it provides rich display functions that display markdown, images, raw HTML and other content in Sense dashboards.

Second, it complements Sense's REST API by wrapping and simplifying some of the most common cluster management operations, such as launching and stopping worker dashboards. It provides this functionality to support other packages that implement higher-level approaches to cluster computing.

Installation

This package is preinstalled on Sense. You can import it with

require("sense")

To install it elsewhere, do

npm install sense

Examples

This example demonstrates HTML widgets and rich display:

var sense = require("sense");

// markdown documentation
var markdown = [
"To quote George E. P. Box,",
"",
"> All models are *wrong*,",
"> but some are **useful**.",
].join("\n");

sense.markdown(markdown);

// Raw HTML
var html = "<iframe width=\"500\" height=\"250\" src=\"http://nodejs.org\"></iframe>";
sense.html(html);

// Syntax-highlighted code
sense.code("var f = function(x, cb) {cb(null, x);};", "javascript");

// An image
sense.image({
  url: "https://npmjs.org/static/npm.png", 
  width: 518, 
  height: 202
});

// Help
sense.help("<b>HINT: Use HTML widgets to add interactivity to your dashboard!</b>");

The next example launches several worker dashboards and communicates with them using ZeroMQ over the project's private network.

First, execute the following code in a dashboard and wait for the installation to finish. You only need to do this once per project.

// Use 'install' to install package 'zmq' from the NPM package.
sense.install("zmq");

Then, save the following code to file worker-script.js in the project's home folder:

// worker-script.js

// Worker dashboards should execute this code on startup.
// Each worker will attempt to connect to the ZeroMQ server whose 
// address is stored in its 'SERVER' environment variable and 
// then will send a message to the server.

// Because zmq was previously installed to the project (see below), 
// workers don't need to reinstall it.
var zmq = require('zmq');
var sense = require('sense');

// Connect to the master
var sock = zmq.socket('req');
console.log('Connecting to master...');
sock.connect(process.env.SERVER);

// Handle replies
sock.on("message", function(msg) {
  sense.display(sense.html('<b>Received reply: ' + msg.toString() + '</b>'));
});

// Send a message
sock.send('Sense is so easy!');

Finally, execute the following code in a dashboard.

var sense = require("sense");
var nWorkers = 3;

// Create the ZeroMQ server.
var zmq = require("zmq");
var sock = zmq.socket("rep");

// Use 'getNetworkInfo' to find out the private IP address of the current
// dashboard in the project's virtual private network.
var address = "tcp://" + sense.networkInfo().projectIP + ":5000";
sock.bindSync(address);

// Listen for worker messages.
var responses = 0;
sock.on("message", function(msg) {
  sense.display(sense.html("<b>Received request: " + msg.toString() + "</b>"));
  sock.send("I agree.");

  // When all workers have sent messages, stop them.
  responses++;
  if (responses === nWorkers) {
    sense.stopWorkers(console.log);
  }
});

// Use 'launchWorkers' to start three small worker dashboards. The above
// code is sent to each, and the current dashboard's project IP address is
// stored in each worker's environment as 'SERVER', so each worker will contact
// the current dashboard.
var workers = sense.launchWorkers({
  n: nWorkers,
  size: "small",
  startupScript: "worker-script.js",
  env: {"SERVER": address}
}, console.log);

API

display

Any object that has a method called toHtml is called an 'HTML widget'. HTML widgets appear as rendered HTML when dropped at the console:

var html = "<iframe width=\"500\" height=\"250\" src=\"http://nodejs.org\"></iframe>";
var x = {toHtml: function() {return html;}};

// Pasting this into the Sense console will show an iframe
// containing the Node.js homepage.
x

The display function, when applied to any HTML widget, displays it in the console:

var sense = require("sense");

// The string will show up in the console as unformatted text.
sense.display("See the iframe below for Node.js's homepage.");

// The HTML object just produced will show up as rendered HTML again.
sense.display(x);

code

Returns an HTML widget that appears as syntax-highlighted code.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.code(code, language);

help

Displays HTML through the Sense help system. Does not return an HTML widget.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.help(html);

html

Returns an HTML widget.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.html(html);

image

Returns an HTML widget that appears as an image.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.image(params);

The parameters should be an object with the following keys:

file, url or data: A filename, url or base64-encoded string containing image data. At least one of these must be defined.
height: The height of the displayed image in pixels.
width: The width of the displayed image in pixels.
type: The file type of the image: "jpeg", "png" etc. Not required when url is defined.

markdown

Returns an HTML widget that appears as rendered markdown.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.markdown(markdown);

install

Asynchronously installs an npm package to the project.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.install(package_name, function(err, consoleOutput){...});

networkInfo

Returns the current dashboard's contact information in an object with keys publicDns, publicPortMapping, sshPassword and projectIP.

var sense = require("sense");
var info = sense.networkInfo();

Every project has its own virtual private network (VPN). The project IP address is bound to the project VPN and is only accessible to other dashboards in the same project. The project VPN makes it easy to use cluster computing frameworks that lack built-in security features, such as MPI.

The public DNS hostname, public port mapping and SSH password describe how the current dashboard can be contacted from outside the project. The public port mapping is an object whose keys and values are integers. Only ports that are keys of the public port mapping can be accessed via the public DNS hostname. If you run a service on port 3000, for example, it can be accessed from anywhere on the internet on the public DNS hostname and port publicPortMapping[3000].

If required, you can SSH to dashboards using the public DNS hostname and port publicPortMapping[22] with username "sense" and the SSH password.

launchWorkers

Asynchronously launches worker dashboards into the cluster.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.launchWorkers(params, function(errors, info){...});

In Sense, a cluster is a group of dashboards with the same master dashboard.
Worker dashboards multiplex their outputs to the master and are cleaned up automatically when the master is stopped or fails. These features make it easy to manage, monitor and debug distributed applications on Sense.

The parameters should be an object with the following keys:

n: The number of workers to launch.
size (optional): The size of the workers, for example "small", "medium" or "large". Defaults to "small".
engine (optional): The name of the npm module to use as the engine. Defaults to "sense-js-engine", but workers can run other engines too.
startup_script (optional): A script file that the worker should execute on launch. The path is relative to the project's home folder.
startup_code (optional): Code that the worker should execute on launch. If both are provided, startup_script has precedence over startup_code.
env (optional): An object containing environment variables that should be set on the workers before any code is executed. This is the preferred way to send a master's contact information information to workers.

If there are no errors, the value passed to the callback is an array of objects. Each object describes one of the workers that was launched and contains keys such as "id", "engine", "status", etc. The full format is documented here.

listWorkers

Asynchronously retrieves information on the worker dashboards in the cluster in an array of objects like that provided by launchWorkers.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.listWorkers(function(err, info){...});

getMaster

Asynchronously retrieves information on the cluster's master dashboard in an object like the ones provided by launchWorkers.

var sense = require("sense");
sense.getMaster(function(err, info){...});

stopWorkers

Asynchronously stops worker dashboards.

var sense = require("sense");

// To stop specific workers:
sense.stopWorkers([id1, id2, ...], function(errors, info) {...});

// To stop all workers in the cluster:
worker.info <- sense.stopWorkers(function(errors, info) {...});

Dashboards' numerical IDs are available at key id in the objects provided by listWorkers and launchWorkers. The value passed to the callback is an array of the same type as that provided by listWorkers.

getAuth

Returns authentication information for the REST API as an object with keys "user" and "password".

Sense's REST API gives you complete programmatic control over virtually every aspect of Sense. Most REST calls require Basic Authentication. To make authenticated REST calls, supply the information returned by getAuth your HTTP client of choice, such as request.

By default getAuth uses the environment variable SENSE_API_TOKEN for authentication. This token restricts access to the current project. For access across projects, you can pass in credentials manually or set SENSE_USERNAME and SENSE_PASSWORD in the environment. To better understand these options, read the Understanding Project Security documentation.

Authenticated REST Example

This example retrieves information about the current project:

var sense = require("sense");
var request = require('request');

var auth = sense.getAuth();

var url = "https://api.senseplatform.com/users/" + 
  process.env.SENSE_OWNER_ID + 
  "/projects/" + 
  process.env.SENSE_PROJECT_ID

request({
  method: "GET",
  url: url,
  json: {},
  auth: auth,
}, function(err, response, body) {...});

The environment variables used in this example are common to all dashboards, across all engines, and are documented here.

Support

Documentation: http://help.senseplatform.com
Email: support@senseplatform.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/senseplatform
Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sense-users
IRC: #senseplatform on irc.freenode.net

License

MIT

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