What is a Component?

Components are core to how IguanaX works.

Interfaces are built up of one or more components

This shows three connected components represented in the flow chart of the dashboard:

You can see these components in the list view on the side of the dashboard also:

Components promote separation of concerns - key to designing interfaces

Components should be designed to handle a single task. For example, when building an interface between two systems that requires some message processing, this integration should be made up of at least 3 components:

Source - receive the message from system A.
Filter - apply any filtering or processing on the message.
Destination - send the processed message to system B.

By separating the tasks between 3 components, we are leveraging Separation of Concerns which will help:

Embrace reusability of components. The more simple the task, the more likely you are able to reuse that component for a future interface.
The team understand and manage the components
Quickly locate and troubleshoot errors that may come up

Components can be viewed, started, stopped and configured through their card view

The card view shows the use of Custom Fields which can be used to change the configuration of the component. You can stop and start the component with the switch in the top left.

Each component is written in Lua

HL7 Server is written in Lua and the source code of the component is stored in Lua. There are no built in components in IguanaX. All the components are written in Lua which means you can look at how they are implemented and alter them to meet your specific requirements.

You can see the source code of the component in the Translator view

Components can use libraries which are shared across many components

IguanaX makes it possible use common libraries across many different components.

These libraries are contained in their own git “sub” repositories. They make use of the help system in IguanaX. We provide a number of libraries but you can also write and distribute your own libraries.

All components and libraries are managed by Git - each component is self contained as a single repository

Git is an integral part of how Iguana X works. Everything component is implemented as a Translator component and the source code for these components is stored in Git repositories.

For convenience of deployment it’s helpful to store these components on a platform like http://bitbucket.org or http://github.com. Currently we use bitbucket.

If Git is new to you, see What is Source Control?.