Fully documenting your app

Complete Module Info

If you haven’t done so already, add the email address of the module’s maintainer to the Dockerfile.

Icons, Publications, Original tool authors, Institutional Affiliations, Contact Information, and most importantly, Method Documentation must be added to your module before it can be deployed. This information will show up in the App catalog (https://appdev.kbase.us/#appcatalog/)

Please be aware that your module implementation and information must conform to our Policies before it will be accepted for public deployment. Fortunately, most of these are common sense (for example, sufficient content on the App Info page for a user to run your app and understand what it’s doing, proper arguments and explanation of their use on the input widget, etc.), but please take the time to familiarize yourself with these requirements before requesting public deployment.

Adding an Icon

You can make a custom icon for each app in your module, or use an existing one that corresponds to the tool that you have wrapped. Feel free to repurpose the icons from existing KBase apps, or make your own. Your icon can be PNG, GIF, or JPEG (the KBase ones are PNG) and should fit in a square 200x200 pixels. To match our existing icons, use these guidelines:

200x200px image with 40px rounded edges
Font: Futura Condensed Medium, 72pt, white
72dpi PNG

PDF vector and PNG bitmap versions that we used for our icons are available at https://github.com/kbase/kb_sdk_docs/tree/master/source/images/app-icons in case you would like to use them as a starting point.

Your icons should be added to your KBase SDK module GitHub repo in the img image folder for each app at:

https://github.com/<MyUserName>/<MyModule>/ui/narrative/methods/<MyMethod>/img/

Then edit the display.yaml file found at:

https://github.com/<MyUserName>/<MyModule>/ui/narrative/methods/<MyMethod>/display.yaml

and add an icon: configuration (NOTE: just add the name of the image file and do not include the path, so not “img/foo.png”). For example, in the file: https://github.com/psdehal/kb_trimmomatic/blob/master/ui/narrative/methods/run_trimmomatic/display.yaml

the icon: is configured by the line: icon: trimmomatic-orange.png

Naming and Categorizing

Each app should have a unique display name. The display name is configured in the display.yaml file at:

https://github.com/<MyUserName>/<MyModule>/ui/narrative/methods/<MyMethod>/display.yaml

and add a name: configuration. If you are wrapping an existing tool with a known name, please include that name to make it easier for people to find it, such as

name: Trimmomatic - Read Trimming

You should tag your app with one (or multiple) “categories”. (If you don’t, it will appear in the “Uncategorized” section and users will be less likely to find it.)

The categories are set in the spec.json file at:

https://github.com/<MyUserName>/<MyModule>/ui/narrative/methods/<MyMethod>/spec.json

Currently, the following categories are recognized. The tag before the : on each line is the internal label for the category, used in the spec.json. The phrase after the : is the display name for the category that is used in the App Catalog.

annotation: Genome Annotation
assembly: Genome Assembly
communities: Microbial Communities
comparative_genomics: Comparative Genomics
expression: Expression
metabolic_modeling: Metabolic Modeling
reads: Read Processing
sequence: Sequence Analysis
util: Utilities

(Please contact us via ContactUs (http://kbase.us/contact-us) if you have suggestions for more… we expect to add more categories and possibly subcategories in the near future.)

An example of a category configuration line is:

"categories": ["active","assembly","util"],

Please leave the category “active” at the beginning of the list of categories, as this is a special category that indicates whether your app should be shown at all in the App Catalog. The rest of the categories are treated as normal tags.

Writing your App Info page

Information for the App Info page is configured in the display.yaml file at:

https://github.com/<MyUserName>/<MyModule>/ui/narrative/methods/<MyMethod>/display.yaml

The fields that should be configured are

name
icon
tooltip
description
publications
screenshots

Screenshots

You can add screenshots (or other relevant images) to the “img/” folder in the same fashion as the icon image. These screenshots should be configured in the display.yaml file as a list with one filename on each line, preceded by a hyphen, e.g.,

screenshots:
    - screenshot_1.png
    - screenshot_2.png

If you do not want to have any screenshots, leave the screenshots: list blank.

screenshots: []

Example

For an example of a complete App Info page that would be acceptable for public deployment, please see examples in the Trimmomatic app:

Important

Please bear in mind that for public release, your module MUST meet all the requirements laid out in the KBase SDK Policies. We reserve the right to delay public release of SDK modules until all requirements are met. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with these policies to avoid delay in releasing your module.