AOE Technology Radar

A static site generator for AOE Technology Radar

Looking for the AOE Tech Radar content?

• The repository is now found here: https://github.com/AOEpeople/techradar
• The AOE Tech radar is deployed here: https://www.aoe.com/techradar/index.html

✨ Version 4.0.0

Version 4.0.0 is a complete rewrite of the AOE Technology Radar. It is now based on Next.js to provide enhanced static site generation. The visualization has been rewritten without the need for the D3 dependency. New features include a fuzzy search based on Fuse.js, non-overlapping blips on the radar, and a reworked tag filter on the homepage.

To migrate from the old version please migrate your package.json's scripts and create a new config.json based on the documentation below. You can find a reference implementation in our repo. The old version is still available in the v3 branch.

Version 4.0.0 also removes the .html extension from the URLs. If you want to support the old URLs, we recommend to add a redirect rule. For nginx, you can use the following rule:

rewrite ^/techradar/(.+)\.html$ /techradar/$1/ permanent;

Create your own radar

The generator is free to use under Open Source License - in fact there are already some other Radars published based on our Radar and there are also Contributions back. However, it would be nice to mention in radar that the generator is based on this repository.

Step 1: Create a new project

Ensure node.js ist installed and create a new project by creating a new folder with a package.json file like the following and adapt to your needs:

{
  "name": "aoe-techradar",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "techradar build",
    "serve": "techradar serve"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "aoe_technology_radar": "^4"
  }
}

Run npm install to install the dependencies and run npm run build to create the initial radar. This will also create a basic bootstrap of all required files, including the config.json and the about.md if they do not exist yet.

Step 2: Change logo and the favicon

Place your logo.svg and favicon.ico in the public folder next to the package.json. The ideal logo is 150px x 60px. For reference have a look at public/logo.svg.

If you want to use a file other than an SVG, copy it to the public folder and set the name of the file as logoFile inside the config.json. e.g. "logoFile": "acme-logo.png"

Step 3: Configure the radar

Open the config.json file and configure the radar to your needs.

Attribute	Description
basePath	Set if hosting under a sub-path, otherwise set it to /. Default is /techradar
baseUrl	Set to the full URL, where the radar will be hosted. Will be used for sitemap.xml. https://www.aoe.com/techradar
logoFile	(optional) Filepath in public folder. Default is logo.svg
jsFile	(optional) Filepath in public folder or URL to enable include of custom script
toggles	(optional) Modify the behaviour and contents of the radar. See config below.
sections	(optional) Modify the order of sections (radar, tags, list)
colors	A map of colors for the radar. Can be any valid CSS color value
quadrants	Config of the 4 quadrants of the radar. See config below.
rings	Config of the rings of the radar. See config below.
flags	Config of the flags of the radar. See config below
chart	If you hava a lot of items, you can increase the size to scale down the radar
social	Social links in the footer. See config below
imprint	URL to the legal information
labels	Configure the labels to change the texts and labels of the radar
tags	(optional) Use to render only items, which contain at least one of the specified tags. e.g ["frontend", "backend"]
editUrl	(optional) If set, an edit button will be shown next to the revision. You can use placeholders for {id} and {release}

config.toggles

Attribute	Description
showChart	Render the radar visualization on the homepage?
showTagFilter	Render the tag filter below the radar?
showQuadrantList	Render the items below the radar?
showEmptyRings	If set to true it will render empty rings in the list

config.sections

An array with of radar, tags, list in order you want them to appear on the page.

config.quadrants

Attribute	Description
id	Used as reference in the radar markdown files and URLs
title	Title of the quadrant
description	Will be shown on startpage and on the quadrants detail page
color	Color of the quadrant arcs and blips

config.rings

Attribute	Description
id	Used as reference in the radar markdown files
title	Title of the ring. Will be used in the badge
description
color	Color of the ring's badge
radius	Size of the ring. Value between 0 and 1, where 0.5 would be a ring 50% wide
strokeWidth	Size of the ring's border

config.flags.[new|changed|default]

Attribute	Description
color	Color of the flag
title	Long label of the flag
titleShort	Short label (single letter) shown in lists
description	Label in the radar legend

config.social.[]

Attribute	Description
href	URL to the website
icon	One of facebook, github, gitlab, instagram, linkedin, x, xing, youtube

Step 4: Add a help page with explanations

Edit the about.md file next to the package.json file. The contents will be shown on the /help-and-about-tech-radar page. Optionally you can change the title of the menu by setting labels.pageAbout in your config.json.

Step 5: Create the radar items

Remove or edit existing items in the radar folder. For a new release, create a folder of the release date (YYYY-MM-DD) under ./radar. e.g. ./radar/2024-03-01.

The items are written in Markdown format (.md)

Each file has a meta header where the attributes of the item are listed:

---
title: "React"
ring: adopt
quadrant: languages-and-frameworks
tags: [frontend, coding]
---

Text goes here. You can use **markdown** here.

Following front-matter attributes are possible:

• title: Name of the Item
• quadrant: Quadrant. One of the configured quadrants in config.quadrants
• ring: Ring section in radar. One of the configured rings in config.rings
• tags: Optional tags for filtering.
• featured: (optional, default "true") If you set this to false, the item will not be visible in the radar quadrants but still be available in the overview.

The name of the .md file acts as item identifier and may overwrite items with the same name from older releases.

If an item is overwritten in a new release, the attributes from the new item are merged with the old ones, and a new history entry is created for that item.

You can integrate images in your markdown. Put the image files in the public/images folder and reference them

![nice image](/images/optional-content-image.png)

Step 6: Build your radar

Your final file and folder structure should look like this:

├── about.md
├── config.json
├── package.json
├── public/
│ ├── images/
│ │ └── optional-content-image.png
│ ├── favicon.ico
│ └── logo.svg
└── radar/
  ├── 2023-12-31/
  │ ├── demo-item-1.md
  │ └── demo-item-2.md
  └── 2024-03-05/
    ├── demo-item-1.md
    └── demo-item-3.md

Run npm run build to build the radar and upload the files of the ./build folder to your server.

You can view a development version of the radar by running npm run serve and open the radar in your browser at http://localhost:3000/techradar or the path you specified via basePath.

Advanced styling with custom.css

If you need to customize the radar's styles, you can add custom CSS rules to the custom.css file.

Be aware that this might break with future versions of the radar as we use css-modules in the components which generates dynamic, hashed class names and the layout structure might change.

Therefore, it's advised the [attribute^=value] selector that matches elements whose attribute value begins with a specified value. As an example, if you want to always show the subline in the header use the following rule:

[class^="Logo_subline"] {
  display: block;
  opacity: 1;
}

If you want to include assets like images or fonts, use ../../public/ as the base path. Adding a background image to the page could be archived like this:

body {
  background: url("../../public/background.png");
}

Changing the font-family of the headlines:

h1,
h2,
h3 {
  font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif;
}

Changes to the css file will not be reflected in the development server. You need to run npm run serve or npm run build to see the changes.

Development

If you want to change core functionality of the radar, you can clone this repository and put your radar's markdown-files, config.json and about.md in the data folder. Run npm run build:data to parse the markdown files and create a data.json and then run npm run dev to start the development server, which will be available at http://localhost:3000/techradar or the path you specified via basePath.