Atrium

A note from the developers

0.0.1 is an alpha release. Treat it accordingly

"master" is going through a major refactor. THINGS MAY BREAK. THE WORLD MAY END

Atrium is a project that has been gestating for a while. Consider the present state of the code a proof-of-concept implementation. There are lots of things we would do differently if we started over again. For more information see ROADMAP.mkd. The development process is coordinated in a public-facing JIRA

What it's for

Atrium is a tool for extending a Blacklight-enabled application by:

  • Grouping items
  • Adding context
  • Customizing presentation

Atrium provides four mechanisms to achieve this end:

  • Collections
  • Exhibits
  • Showcases
  • Themes

Collections

A collection contains a subset of the items in the complete index as defined by a Solr query. An explicitly declared subset of the total facets can be applied to these items. A collection description and or featured items form the collection can be displayed at the top level collection page. Collections can be themed independently of the base application and other collections.

Exhibits

An exhibit is a customizable view of a single topic (as defined by a facet), further scoped by an optional Solr query. An exhibit defines it's own hierarchical list of facets. An exhibit may also have a description and a list of featured items.

Showcases

A showcase is a container for storing feature items and descriptions. A showcase can be attached to a collection, exhibit, or to specific combinations of selected facets and facet values within an exhibit. There can be multiple showcases in an exhibit.

Themes

At present, themes are a wrapper around the existing rails templating system. A theme is simply a nested layout that works in conjunction with some yeild blocks in the base atrium layout. This is a pretty flexible solution but requires the implementer to know how layouts and rendering work in Rails. It also means you have to re-deploy the application every time you want to change how it looks.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Hiten Parmar for the gem name. The original atrium gem was an instant web server.