The Vimeo Example

We are going to build a widget to access videos from Vimeo. This exercise is going to help us get familiar with how to access external content, leveraging open source libraries and using jQuery.

1. Create a new widget

We will now create a new widget and name it vimeo; the name is important to follow along in the exercises. In a Visual Studio Code terminal window make sure that you are in the icec-widgets-starter directory.

Issue the following command:

node scripts/createWidget.js vimeo jquery


create widget

2. Initialize the widget

The default widget comes with a set of JavaScript modules and build tools pre-configured. We need to install them. Switch to the directory that was just created.

  • run npm install
cd src/widgets/vimeo

npm install


3. Adding sample code to the cssgrid widget

In the left navigation for Visual Studio code, expand the src/widgets/vimeo folder. If you do not see the vimeo folder, click the refresh icon on the top right to update your folder list.

edit cssgrid widget

  • Click on the index.js to modify it. Does this look familiar? Copy and paste the following javascript to replace the var html = Hello World.
        var html = `
            <div id='player'> 
            </div> 
            <script> 
            vimeowrap('player').setup({ 
                urls: [ 
                    'https://vimeo.com/user3709818', 
                ], 
                plugins: { 
                    'playlist':{} 
                } 
            }); 
            </script>
        `
  • The above script snippet is from an open source library; get more details here.

  • Save the file.

4. Build the widget

In order to make the widget available to ICEC we are going to run a build task that packages all the required files and deploy them to our Development server under the /build/public directory and also under the dist directory.

  • Issue the following command from a terminal window while in the src/widgets/vimeo directory.
npm run build
  • From the Visual Studio Code Explorer on the left panel, navigate to the src/widgets/vimeo/dist and review the file there.

  • Repeat the above step for the build/public folder.

  • NOTE: This widget is pure JavaScript with the HTML code inside of it, so only the .js files are produced.