lc-signage

Display signage backend service for Library Calendar-driven websites. Takes event information from the calendar and processes it into smaller individual .json files for a frontend webpage or other service.

lc-signage is developed and maintained by the Madion County Public Library Technology Services department.

Package Information

• lc-signage: Rust client service to poll website for event information.
• lc-signage/frontend: Example HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for a server deployment.
• lc-signage/hardware: Information about the equipment and hardware used to create a working display sign.

See the subdirectories for additional information on frontend and hardware. All three components are able to be used without the other if desired; the exported JSON from the service is a stripped-down and minimalized version of the JSON returned by Library Calendar.

Installation

lc-signage runs on any Linux or Windows-based platform with the default configuration of cross_platform. If you are running on a Linux distribution with systemd, you may wish to enable the systemd feature to enable native logging to journald. The env_logger backend for cross_platform will forward its output to journalctl if the service is installed as a systemd service unit.

Download the current release from the releases and extract the binary to your desired path. The binary can be run as-is as long as the configuration file is present.

Building from source

cargo run --release will compile and run the program immediately for testing purposes, as long as config.toml exists and is correctly configured.

Install lc-signage to your default cargo binary directory by invoking cargo install --path=.. You may also install to a different path if desired.

Systemd Unit Configuration

Running lc-signage as a system service enables auto-restart of service in case of failure and lets the service start on login. The ExecStart option points to the install path, so make sure it points to your binary. This step is not necessary but it simplifies deployment.

For an example lc-signage.service unit file (located in ~/.config/systemd/user/):

[Unit]
Description=Library Calendar Room Display Service

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
ExecStart=/home/<user>/.cargo/bin/lc-signage

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Afterwards, you can refresh the systemd service cache and enable the service and start it:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now lc-signage.service

Check the log status by running:

journalctl --user -u lc-signage

You will need to ensure that you maintain a login on the server you install this on to run the application, so consider an autologin configuration.

Configuration

lc-signage is configured through a config.toml located by default in your user directory at ~/.config/lc-signage/config.toml. Currently this is the only supported location to configure this service.

An example configuration file is noted below.

auth_url = "https://<your library url>/oauth/authorize"
token_url = "https://<your library url>/oauth/token"
feed_url = "https://<your library url>/events/feed/json"
client_id = "<id string>"
client_secret = "<secret string>"
# Internal room IDs.
# Use '+' to separate rooms in the same string if you want their output to be merged in the same JSON result file
room_keys = ["123", "456", "789+102"]
# Optional parameter for save location
# Default is given below
save_path = "~/.local/share/web/events"

# Optional parameters for date range to pull
# Default configuration only pulls programs that have an end time between the current time and the end of the current day
start_time = "now"
end_time = "tomorrow"

save_path is an optional field; it will overwrite the default save location. Your user needs write permissions on the target output directory. The program will create the directory if it does not exist already.

Limitations

Currently lc-signage is limited in scope and is designed for our use case. It will only parse out the following information from a calendar event:

• Title
• Public/Private
• Start date
• End date
• Branch
• Room
• Event ID
• Moderation State

The output JSON contains:

• Title
• Public/Private
• Date (in %Y-%m-%d format)
• Start time (in %h:%m %p format)
• End time (in %h:%m %p)
• Event ID
• Room
• Moderation State

The output JSON is stored in the directory specified by save_path in the config file.

The service should be compatible as-is with any Library Calendar-based event calendar system. If you require additional functionality please feel free to open an issue on the tracker or make the modification on your local copy.