🚀 Launchpad

Launchpad is a highly configurable suite of tools to manage media installations. It can:

• Launch, control and monitor muiltiple processes (via PM2)
• Download and locally cache content from various common web APIs
• Bootstrap Windows PCs with common exhibit settings
• Consolidate and route application logs
• ...and much more

%%{ init: { 'flowchart': { 'curve': 'bumpX' } } }%%
graph LR
    Launchpad:::package

    Launchpad --> Scaffold:::package -.-> PCs([PCs])
    Launchpad --> Content:::package -.-> APIs([APIs])
    Launchpad --> Monitor:::package -.-> Apps([Apps])

    APIs -.-> Cache[(Cache)]
    Apps -.-> Cache

    click Launchpad "/packages/launchpad" "Core package for logging, events, hooks"
    click Scaffold "/packages/scaffold" "Windows config, automation, app installs"
    click Content "/packages/content" "Download, cache and process content"
    click Monitor "/packages/monitor" "Launch and monitor apps via PM2"

    classDef package fill:#69f,stroke:#000,color:#fff

Getting Started

1. Install launchpad: npm i @bluecadet/launchpad
2. Create a launchpad.config.js config (see configuration)
3. Optional: Bootstrap your PC with npx launchpad scaffold
4. Run npx launchpad

Run npx launchpad --help to see all available commands.

Note: Launchpad is typically triggered run by a startup task (e.g. Windows Task Scheduler) using npx launchpad. When installed globally (npm i -g @bluecadet/launchpad), you can use the launchpad command instead. See config loading for more info.

Configuration

Each launchpad package is configured via its own section in launchpad.config.js. Below is a simple example that uses the content package to download JSON and images from Flickr and monitor to launch a single app:

import { defineConfig } from "@bluecadet/launchpad";

export default defineConfig({
    content: {
        sources: [
            {
                id: "flickr-images",
                files: {
                    "spaceships.json":
                        "https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?format=json&nojsoncallback=1&tags=spaceship",
                    "rockets.json":
                        "https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?format=json&nojsoncallback=1&tags=rocket",
                },
            },
        ],
    },
    monitor: {
        apps: [
            {
                pm2: {
                    name: "my-app",
                    script: "my-app.exe",
                    cwd: "./builds/",
                },
            },
        ],
    },
});

Note: Scaffold is configured separately in a PowerShell file. This is a guided process when you run npx launchpad scaffold.

Documentation

All available config settings across packages can be found in the links below:

• monitor: Run and monitor apps
• content: Download and cache remote content
  • sources: An array containing one or more of the following content source options:
  • airtable: Download content from Airtable
  • contentful: Download content from Contentful
  • json: Download content from JSON endpoints
  • strapi: Download content from Strapi
  • sanity: Download content from Sanity
• logging: Route logs to the console and to files
• hooks: Execute scripts before or after common events (e.g. after content has been updated)

Config Loading

• By default, Launchpad looks for launchpad.config.js, launchpad.config.mjs, launchpad.json or config.json at the cwd (where you ran npx launchpad/launchpad from)
• You can change the default path with --config=<YOUR_FILE_PATH> or -c=<YOUR_FILE_PATH> (e.g. npx launchpad --config=../settings/my-config.json)
• If no config is found, Launchpad will traverse up directories (up to 64) to find one
• All config values can be overridden via --foo=bar (e.g. --logging.level=debug)

.env Files

Launchpad uses dotenv to load in environment variables from .env and .env.local files located in the same directory as your config file.

Environment variables are loaded before the config file is parsed, so you can use them in your config file. For example, you can use process.env.MY_ENV_VAR in your config file to access the value of MY_ENV_VAR in your .env file.

[!WARNING]
We recommend using .env.local for sensitive credentials that should not be committed to source control. You should add *.local to your .gitignore to avoid them being checked into git.

All Launchpad CLI commands also accept --env <ENV_FILE_PATH(S)> (alias -e) options to manually specify one or more .env files to load. These paths are relative to the CWD (where you ran npx launchpad/launchpad from).

# Load ../.env then ../.env.develop
npx launchpad -e ../.env -e ../.env.develop

Additionally, the --cascade-env=<ENV_NAME> (alias -E) option which will load the following files located alongside your config file:

• .env
• .env.local
• .env.<ENV_NAME>
• .env.<ENV_NAME>.local

Packages

This repo is a monorepo that includes the following packages:

• @bluecadet/launchpad
• @bluecadet/launchpad-content
• @bluecadet/launchpad-monitor
• @bluecadet/launchpad-scaffold
• @bluecadet/launchpad-utils

Each of these packages can be launched and configured independently (except for utils), so if you only need app-monitoring or content updates, you can install only @bluecadet/launchpad-monitor or @bluecadet/launchpad-content.

Requirements

Launchpad requires Node >=17.5.0 and NPM >=8.5.1 for Windows API integration and workspaces support.

We recommend installing the latest version of NodeJS and NPM via nvm-windows:

nvm install latest
nvm use latest
npm i -g npm@latest