aaronpkelly/timeliner repository overview

⁠Timeliner

"See the earth as it was" - original headline

This was a cool little project that I made which displays pushpins on a map when a city was founded, up until it is destroyed.

⁠Getting started

Oh I need help, yes I do:

https://wesbos.com/javascript-modules/⁠

⁠Docker

Run the docker image, then connect to the container in your browser at http://localhost:8080⁠:

docker run --rm aaronpkelly/timeliner

You can also build the image, but you will need to pass in a Github personal access token for authorising with Github packages (https://help.github.com/en/github/managing-packages-with-github-packages/about-github-packages⁠), as the image depends on npm libraries that are published there:

docker build -t aaronpkelly/timeliner .

⁠Gitpod

TODO: i can't get the app started with these files yet

⁠Other ways

If you are not running the container, you will need to:

• authenticate with the github packages nmp repo
• install the dependencies by running:

npm install

You also may need to generate your own "Maps JavaScript API" token.

Go here and create a MAPS Javascript API "project", setup BILLING for your project, and then you can generate one: https://console.cloud.google.com/google/maps-apis⁠

Then you can just directly run the index.html file.

⁠How it works

Displays a simple flat map of earth, and populates it with pushpins when you give it some time-series data.

It takes in a fairly simple JSON file:

  {
    "city": "Jericho",
    "founded": -9600,
    "abandoned": 3000,
    "lat": 31.52,
    "lng": 35.26
  },

And will display a pushpin on the map as long as the year is between those two values.

⁠Usage

• UP/DOWN arrow keys increase the step amount
• LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys increment/decrement the year

⁠Technical notes

This app requires to be hosted and run on a webserver in order for the pushpins to work, as the way I read JSON files is using xmlhttp, and there's some weird CORS shit that messes with things if you don't.

⁠The future

The code can/should be generalised to display ANY time-series event data, ideally with beginnings+ends, as there would be a lot of pushpins if single-event tracking was been done. Births/deaths of Greek philosophers, human settlements/tribes, empires, time spent in music chart #1 by city of origin...

Also, TESTS. I NEED TESTS.