Development Guide

Welcome!

This guide intends to give an overview of Helios's software architecture. These are the components that make up the application and how each component works together with the others.

Starting at the highest level, consider the following components.

1. The UI, user interface, gets input from the user about what ought to be rendered.
2. Once the user requests data, that information is passed to the Scene, where it queries external APIs to get the necessary data.
3. The Scene then builds model objects, these models represent how the data will be rendered. The models are created via threejs
4. Ultimately these models get added to the renderer, and are displayed and interacted with.

Relevant Links:

• User Interface
• Scene
• Models
• API
• Renderer

JavaScript / TypeScript

Helios started out using javascript, while newer modules are created with typescript (preferred).

If you're looking for a relatively easy contribution, migrating existing javascript files to typescript and adding variable and return types would be helpful. Most javascript files are using jsdoc syntax to describe variable types and return values.