Create Your Own

The Mash Maker Widget API allows you to easily create your own Widgets. These widgets can visualize data, add data to the page, communicate with other widgets, import data from other sources, and generally do interesting things with web pages.

It's all done with Iframes

When a widget is added to the page, its main content is loaded into an iframe. Iframes are also used for the settings panel, and for item visualizations.

Mash Maker calls various Entry Points on these iframes, and the iframes talk to Mash Maker using a set of Methods.

Registering a Widget

In order to use a widget with Mash Maker you must first register it with Mash Maker, by pointing Mash Maker to a Configuration File that tells Mash Maker where to find other information.

To register a Configuration File, following the following prodedure:

• Open the Expert Panel
• Navigate to the widget panel
• Check the "expert controls" box
• Click on "Define New"
• Enter the URL of the Configuration File
• Click "Load Config File"
• Check "share with others" if you believe your widget is ready to be used by other people
• Click "Publish"

You can also use the expert controls to reload the configuration file, change the sharing status, or delete a previously registered widget.

Settings Panels

The settings panel runs in a different iframe to the main widget iframe, but use the Widget API to share settings information. If one frame calls setSettings then the settings are passed to the other frame using the mashmaker_widget_settings entry point.

Selection Sharing

A similar technique is used to allow all the widgets on the page to share a single selection. When a user selects something in a visualization widget, the widget should call select. This will cause mashmaker_widget_select to be called for all widgets that have the select feature enabled in their Configuration File.