Pixel Stream

This is a very simple test project to exercise some of the abilities (and really to just learn about the abilities) of ZeroMQ. It's envisioning what an ad or traffic collection service would look like if it was designed today. A lot of it is hacky, but just ignore those bits for now, it'll improve with age.

There's 3 main components to this system, all connected to each other through a ZeroMQ message bus:

----------------              ----- Pixel Logger ---- MongoDB
|              |  pub/sub     |
| Pixel Server |------------------- Pixel Display --- Web Browser
|              |              |
----------------              ----- Pixel Display --- Web Browser

Setup

You can install all of the required dependencies using bundler:

% bundle install

You'll also need to install MongoDB and ZeroMQ. If you're on a Mac, then these are easily installed with Homebrew:

% brew install mongodb
% brew install zmq

Running

You'll need to start all 3 services to get the full effect of this demo. First, start the pixel server:

% cd PixelServer
% ./pixelserver.rb

Then, start the pixel logger (mongo should also be started at this point):

% cd PixelLogger
% ./pixel-logger.rb

Then, start the pixel display:

% cd PixelDisplay
% ./pixel-display.rb -p 4568

I like to use htty for interacting with web services but you're free to use cURL as well (which is always installed and easy to use). Open your web browser to:

http://localhost:4568

You'll see a screen, containing a large map and a table below it (excuse the lack of CSS markup to make it look pretty). Now, start hitting pixels:

curl http://localhost:4567/pixel.gif

You should start seeing red dots appearing on the screen, and table entries will start appearing. If you reload the page, those entries will be loaded again.

Contact

Questions? Improvements? Of course there will be...this was just a test program.

mike.glazer@gmail.com