Data-driven widgets

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This page is related to Elementi widgets library & Data feed pages.

Introduction

Data-driven

The data-driven widgets have been designed to ease up the creation of data-driven content from common types of data sources (e.g., RSS, Text, Spreadsheets, Calendars, etc.). They can be used to automatically display data extracted from local or external sources.

For each data source natively supported by the HMP, Elementi provides a set of widgets to facilitate displaying the data using different layouts: Text Bar, Text Ticker, Text Roll, Media Playlist, Media Crawler, Slideshow, Table.

Each widget has its own set of properties allowing to change the widget behavior. The widget layout is built using data placeholders and may be further customized to suit the user requirements.

To summarize, working with the data-driven widgets implies the following steps:

  1. Identify the data source type - like RSS feed, text file, spreadsheet, calendar, media folder etc.
  2. Open Widgets library and find the widgets designed to display that particular data type.
  3. Select the widget variant (ticker, playlist, etc.) that uses a data layout as close as possible to how you want to have the data displayed.
  4. Drag & drop the widget into your project.
  5. Customize the widget properties & layout.

Elementi built-in widgets

Data-driven widgets included into Elementi
Folder name From Last update Notes
Flickr Elementi 2016 Elementi 2017 Widgets that display images provided by Flickr.
Yammer Elementi 2018 Elementi 2018 Widgets that display data provided by Yammer.
RSS Elementi 2015 Elementi 2017 Widgets that display data extracted from RSS feeds.
Text Elementi 2015 Elementi 2015 Widgets that display data extracted from text files.
Spreadsheets Elementi 2015 Elementi 2018 Widgets that display data extracted from spreadsheet files.
Calendars Elementi 2015 Elementi 2021 Widgets that display data extracted from calendar files.
Media Elementi 2015 Elementi 2018 Widgets that display media files retrieved from media folders.
Charts Elementi 3.x Elementi 2018 Widgets that represent data from CSV spreadsheet data sources as charts (column, line, pie, etc.).
Gauges Elementi 3.x Elementi 2018 Widgets that represent data from CSV spreadsheet data sources as linear or circular gauges.
Finance Elementi 2016 Elementi 2016 Widgets that display financial data, like exchange rate and market data.
Weather Elementi 2016 Elementi 2016 Widgets that display weather information.
Data Feeds Elementi 2015 Elementi 2018 Advanced widgets that display data extracted from different types of data sources. Available only for Elementi X users.

The following widgets have been discontinued.

Folder name From Last update Notes
Twitter Elementi 2016 Elementi 2023 Widgets that display data provided by Twitter; they are no longer supported and have been removed starting with Elementi 2023.
Facebook Elementi 2017 Elementi 2021 Widgets that display data provided by Facebook; they are no longer supported and have been removed starting with Elementi 2021 Update 8
Instagram Elementi 2017 Elementi 2020 Widgets that display data provided by Instagram; they are no longer supported and have been removed starting with Elementi 2020.

More widgets

Other data-driven widgets (based on the built-in widgets above) are available as separate downloads:

Customization

Every data-driven widget offers different user-editable properties that can be used to modified the widget behavior and general aspect. Customizing a data-driven widget usually implies the following steps:

  1. Configure the properties related to the data source from where the data items are retrieved.
    For this, click on the Data Feed Properties button to open the "Data Feed Properties" dialog.
  2. Configure the rest of the widget properties:
    Locale, Transition, Looping, Speed, Direction etc.
  3. Customize the data layout.
    The widget layout is built using data placeholders; depending on the widget used, the layout for displaying the retrieved data is constructed using:

When opening a data-driven widget within Elementi, the actual content from the data feed is displayed. When modifying the data layout, the widget is switched into edit mode, during which the playback is paused and the actual content is replaced by the placeholder for edition text, if any, or the data placeholder otherwise. To edit the layer, click a second time on the field layer - the data placeholder (e.g., [[field]]) can now be edited. To restart the normal view, press the play button.

For more advanced use cases, check out how to customize a data-driven widget.

Troubleshooting

  • When testing the data source for a data-driven widget included into a playlist, an "Operation Failed" error might be returned. The workaround for this issue is to open the widget directly. This is a regression introduced in 4.2.0 release.
This page was last modified on 5 February 2024, at 12:49.