This chapter discusses the following topics:
The Role of a Klip in Klipfolio Dashboard
The basic Klip structure
Using the development tools
One of the questions often asked about the Klips is what they actually do. The short answer is that they give instructions to the Klipfolio Dashboard application on how to display data, but what kind of instructions?
Perhaps the answer to that question is best explained by examining what happens whenever a Klip is refreshed. Regardless of the type, location or the structure of your data source, every Klip goes through the following steps to keep its content up to date.
Access the content source
We specify the location of the data source in the Klip. The Klipfolio Dashboard application takes that information and accesses the data source.
Get the data and convert it to XML format if it isn't already
If the data is in the XML format, the application will go ahead and move on to the next step; however, if it isn't, such as in the cases of database tables or Excel spreadsheets, Klipfolio Dashboard's internal engines, sometimes with the help of external tools, will take care of converting it to XML.
Process the XML
It is the application's job to process the XML, but it needs to know what parts of the data source to process. We provide this information in the Klip.
Display new and updated content
The Klip provides the application with the instructions on how to display the content; the application keeps an internal record of what already exists in the Klip and what doesn't. As Klip developers, we don't need to write any additional code to capture this information.
In order for the Klipfolio Dashboard application to be able to understand the instructions written in the Klips as outlined above, all of your Klips must follow a basic structure.
