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Terminology

Before we go further we should get some basic terminology out of the way.

Below are brief descriptions of the most important terms, which we will explore more throughout the documentation.

Rig​

In Slipway the thing which generates a dashboard is called a Rig. A Rig is a collection of Components rigged together so that data flows between the Components (in a DAG) to produce outputs.

The output of any "leaf" Component (a Component which is not an input to any other Component) could considered an output to the Rig. However usually we only want one output so we look for a Component with a handle named output or render.

Component​

A Component is a piece of code which takes a JSON input and returns a JSON output.

Components can be written in Javascript, or any language which compiles to WASM, such as Rust. They can be re-usable and shared publicly, or they can be entirely custom and private to you.

Re-usable components are what make Slipway so powerful, and allow others to quickly create their own custom Rigs with very little code.

Canvas​

A "canvas" in Slipway is a specially formatted JSON snippet which represents an image. Components which render images will output their results in the canvas format, and Slipway recognizes the format and understands that it should be displayed as an image.

You can see what this JSON looks like here.

Slipway Host​

The program which is executing the Rig. The host handles tasks such as:

  • Determining which components to run next.
  • Validating component inputs and outputs.
  • Validating permissions.
  • Running the components.

Components can communicate with the host when they want to interact with the outside world, using the Host API.

Component Handle​

The name used to identify a specific instance of a Component within a Rig. A Component can appear in a Rig multiple times, but given different handles to distinguish between them.

Component Reference​

Something that uniquely identifies a Component implementation.

It could be:

  • an ID (e.g. some_publisher.my_component.1.24.1)
  • an HTTPS URL (e.g. https://example.com/my_component.tar)
  • a File URL (e.g. file:components/my_component.tar)

See Component Registries for more information.