Data-driven widgets
From SpinetiX Support Wiki
This page is related to Elementi widgets library & Data feed pages.
Contents
Introduction
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:
- Identify the data source type - like RSS feed, text file, spreadsheet, calendar, media folder etc.
- Open Widgets library and find the widgets designed to display that particular data type.
- 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.
- Drag & drop the widget into your project.
- Customize the widget properties & layout.
Elementi built-in widgets
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| |
Elementi 2016 | Elementi 2023 | Widgets that display data provided by Twitter; they are no longer supported and have been removed starting with Elementi 2023. |
| |
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 |
| |
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:
- Birthday widgets
- Weather widgets for Elementi 2015
- Weather widgets for Elementi 3.x
- HTML table widget
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:
- Configure the properties related to the data source from where the data items are retrieved.
- For this, click on the
button to open the "Data Feed Properties" dialog.
- For this, click on the
- Configure the rest of the widget properties:
- Locale, Transition, Looping, Speed, Direction etc.
- 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:
- A single text layer (for Text Bar, Text Roll and Text Ticker widgets),
- A single media layer (for Media Playlist and Media Crawler widgets),
- One or more text & media layers (for Slideshow and Table widgets).
- 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.
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.