We offer the opportunity to create projects on the CleverMaps platform to all registered users. This article assumes that you have an account in CleverMaps, and that you are familiar with the application itself.

Please note that you need to have an account with an email address. If you have registered using the social login, you do not have your own credentials which you'll need later. You can sign up here.

Introduction

To create all projects on the platform, we use a command line interface tool called CleverMaps Shell.

This tool manages all aspects of a project, whether it is the user interface, the data model, the metrics or the data load itself. Shell is described in detail in its own section

In the future, we want the users to be able to create their projects in the application itself. The vision is to have a "studio", where everyone can easily configure the projects using a specialized user interface. But that's still a long way ahead, so in the meantime we developed this simple command line tool. It may not be so user friendly, but it gets the work perfectly done.

Shell runs in a command line - cmd.exe on Windows, Unix shell on Linux and Terminal on Mac. Shell manages CleverMaps projects by using project dumps. Project dump is an image of the project in a specific time. You dump (~download) the project to your local machine from our server, and edit different parts of it using a text editor. After you make your changes, you upload (~push) them back to the project. Project dump structure is described in detail in this article.

Each CleverMaps project consists of data and metadata. There are 11 types of metadata objects. Each type configures different aspect of the project. These objects naturally have relations between them, and together they form a metadata model. You can read more about the model in its own section.

In a project dump, the metadata are represented as JSON files, and the data as CSV files.

Prerequisites

Technical prerequisites

There's a few technical prerequisites you'll need to fulfill:

Personal prerequisites

There are also is a certain level of knowledge you need to have:


The preparation, transformation and cleaning of the data you use is a whole different subject. This documentation does not cover the work of a data analyst. It assumes that your data are valid and contain all required properties.

Where to start?

There is a number of ways on how to start with developing projects. You can either start from scratch, follow our tutorial or clone an existing project and tweak it.

Follow our tutorial

We have prepared a series of tutorials, which cover the basics CleverMaps project development. There is a first tutorial and a number of following tutorials.

(tick) This is the recommended option.

Clone an existing project

There is a project available, which has all the tutorials completed. You can clone it (guide), tweak it and see what changes in the application.

(warning) This option assumes that you are at least familiar with the metadata model and CleverMaps Shell.

Create a project from scratch

You can download Shell and jump into the project development right away. It is useful to have the command list at hand.

(minus) This is an option for people who value self-taught abilities above everything else.