Helsinki alueittain is a PDF publication containing statistical information on different boroughs in Helsinki. Excel files are used for gathering all the statistics prior to publication. This is a prototype implementation of a web version of the publication, specifically a prototype of the publication process.
The goal is to reuse the same Excel files as are used for the PDF publication. In order to use the Excel data, we need a few mappings: one to the data model used internally by the prototype and one to configure how the statistics are presented to the end user (grouping, whether or not the city's average should be shown and so on). All in all, we wanted to make a publication process that is as flexible as possible in the hands of a normal user.
The prototype is implemented using Clojure. You will need the Leiningen build tool. With Leiningen installed, you can start the web application at the command prompt:
$> lein ring server
Then, open up a browser and visit http://localhost:3000.
At first, there are no statistics to show. Visit the "Ylläpito" page to
upload statistics and configuration files. Examples that can be used are
found in the etc/ directory. After publishing the data, you can see
statistics for different areas of Helsinki on the first page.
Clojure is an excellent tool for writing web applications. Its expressiveness means that you have to write very little code to get a whole lot done. It is therefore particularily well suited for rapid prototying of web applications. Being on the JVM is also a good thing, since there are excellent Java libraries for dealing with Excel spreadsheets.