Introducing HawkFX

As I said before, I started playing with JRubyFX. And for me learning something new best works with a use case, so I started creating an inventory browser for Hawkular.

Why JRubyFX?

Let's first start with "What is JRubyFX" anyway? JRubyFX is JavaFX brought to the Ruby world by the means of JRuby. This means that you can implement UIs with the help of the JavaFX framework and use its components and tools to build the UI. The difference to plain JavaFX is though that all the implementation code is written in Ruby and run by JRuby on the JVM.

I was doing a bit of JavaFX in the past and I wanted to generate a standalone inventory browser for Hawkular. Now that I have been working with Ruby lately and we already have the Hawkular client gem, I thought I'd give JRubyFX a try.

And I have to say this is pretty cool.

Some screenshots

Login screen

Main screen with inventory browser (left) and metric chart

The main screen shows a tree view on the left that displays the feeds as top level elements. Opening a feed will show recursively the resources and metrics. Clicking on a metric gets it charted on the right side.

Alert and Event list

A menu item in the main screen opens the alerts browser that allows to peek at alerts and events in the system.

Like in the main screen, there is a context menu that will allow to view the raw object as shown below:

Raw display of an event

Custom components

The time range picker on the main screen and alert screen is a custom component, that was implemented once with a .fxml file and some Ruby code:

class TimePicker < Java::javafx::scene::layout::HBox
  include JRubyFX::Controller

  fxml 'TimePicker.fxml'

  def initialize(caller, callback)
[..]
end

Including it is pretty simple too:

    box = find '#alertEventTopBox'
    box.children.add time_picker(self, :set_time_range)

In the first line we find the HBox to add the picker and then just add it to the children of the box. Done.

Running and code

HawkFX is available on my GitHub account at https://github.com/pilhuhn/hawkfx. To run the tool you need JRuby 9

If you are using rvm you can select it via

rvm use jruby-9.0.5.0

install and use bundler to install the required gems

gem install bundler bundle install

then run

jruby hawkfx.rb

Enjoy! :-)

Presenting at ManageIQ Design Summit 2016

I have the luck to go to the ManageIQ Design Summit 2016 in Mahwah, New Jersey at the beginning of June. And not only that, but also to be able to present there (more about this in a moment).

You may be looking at the web site of ManageIQ or the Design summit and think "why the heck is the Java and JBoss guy talking at a Ruby conference"? And the answer is simple:

Hawkular and ManageIQ are collaborating on the future of Middleware management.

And so I will talk about "Adding middleware to the game", describing the current state of Red Hat middleware and monitoring with RHQ and Hawkular, the integration with ManageIQ that we are already working on. And also the path and vision going forward.

ManageIQ has all the knowledge about the operating system and infrastructure the Middleware servers are running on, where Hawkular only provides some basic information. ManageIQ on the other hand has no notion of applications yet, wich is the domain of Hawkular. ManageIQ can also be used to provision new VMs and containers with Middleware in them, which can then be monitored and managed by Hawkular.

If you are close by, join me :)

NB: while I am there I will try find some of the nearby Geocaches, as New Jersey is still missing on my list (as so many other states in he US :)