On Wednesday 30 January 2008, Henrik Stoerner wrote:
On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 07:48:49AM -0500, user-ce96540ed38f@xymon.invalid wrote:
Henrik Stoerner wrote:
Someone in this thread wrote that he was thinking of implementing a new
web front-end. That would be fantastic! I would gladly drop support for
the old static HTML files generated by bbgen in favor of a modernized
web interface. And the web U/I is fairly independent from the rest of
Hobbit, so it is easy to change.
I took a look at this a bit. The hardest part about this as I see it,
would be pulling information from multiple data sources. For report data
I could use bb commands (hobbitdxboard, or others), but then I would need
to parse the server's bb-host file for page layouting. Which isn't a huge
problem, just adds complication.
This assumes you want to keep on using bb-hosts as the source of your
layout - I don't think that is a good idea. I would much rather have all
of the webpage layout stuff moved somewhere separate, so you can generate
multiple different sets of webpages from the same monitoring data. So
there would be one XML file describing how the webpages are laid out,
which hosts goes on what pages etc - and another XML file you get from
the hobbitdxboard command that fills in the current data on those pages.
The only reason I would assume the need to continue to use the bb-host file as the source of layout, is because the Hobbit alert & threshold 'PAGE=' specifications do. Thats why I mentioned that I thought you had stateted the need to move away from the bb-hosts config file. GUI Layout seems to be an integral part of Hobbit (i.e. alert & threshold definitions based on layout). And again, I am not a huge fan of XML, but it seems that it would be a good option to migrate toward (from bb-hosts). That way if people did want to write a new GUI for Hobbit it would not be difficult. It would also be possible to add new fields, without affecting core Hobbit functionality. i.e. writing a version of BBMap for hobbit.
But again, I remember in a previous post your (and other maillist members) reluctance to use XML for any configuration. So it almost seems like a catch22. So as I see it, ideally need a layout config that:
1. Simple to define layout.
2. Open to custom field definiton additions.
3. Open to allow for 3rd party GUI development.
4. Doesn't break core hobbit functionality.
I maybe stating the obvious, just figure I would flush out my thoughts.
~Steve