DogCraft

This is proof of concept project making a bridge between DataDog metrics and Minecraft. It allows you to view some custom DataDog dashboards within Minecraft. They show the real stuff.

Current features:

• display any metric, as long as you can formulate what you want as a query that returns a row of data
• skin them the way you want, change color, size, position
• customizable through YAML files, describe your Dashboard in a file, feed the program with it and voilà, you have a new dashboards
• support multiple dashboards, each dashboard can obviously show several graphs
• support alert buttons (they turn red when everything is on fire !)
• primitive labeling of graphs, the top corner can show a few cubic letters to remind you what this item is
• no dirty artefacts left after you're done with it, programs cleans up all the blocks it did put in the first place
• you can freely move around and play minecraft as you wish, only there are a few blocks dedicated to you total awareness of what's going on in your systems
• graphs are updated on-the-fly, continuously, several times per minute
• ...

Caveats:

• requires a dedicated Minecraft server, one hosted by you, and patched. This should not be a show stopper, but setting this up can be tricky
• yes, the genuine DataDog web UI is faster than this hack
• not production ready, no packaging, and lacks heavy testing

Getting started

Dependencies

Minecraft

Install Python requirements

As root:

apt-get install python3 idle3 python3-pip # yes, Python 3, version 2.7 won't work
apt-get install openjdk-8-jre             # JDK >= 7
apt-get install git wget

Get and build Spigot

export PYMINECRAFT=$HOME/.pyminecraft     # choose a user-writable folder
install -d $PYMINECRAFT/build             # create the folder
cd $PYMINECRAFT/build                     # go to the right place
git config --global --unset core.autocrlf # need this! you can switch it off after
# now get the latest BuildTools.jar, think of this as a Makefile on steroids
wget https://hub.spigotmc.org/jenkins/job/BuildTools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/target/BuildTools.jar
java -jar BuildTools.jar --rev 1.10.2     # replace 1.10.2 by *YOUR* Minecraft version
cp craftbukkit*jar $PYMINECRAFT/
cp spigot*jar $PYMINECRAFT/

First start

cat <<EOF > $PYMINECRAFT/start.sh
#!/bin/sh

java -Xms512M -Xmx1024M -XX:MaxPermSize=128M -jar ./spigot-1.10.2.jar
EOF
chmod a+x $PYMINECRAFT/start.sh
cd $PYMINECRAFT
./start.sh

At this stage, server should start and ask for EULA agreement. Edit the file eula.txt (has been created in your directory) and replace eula=false by eula=true

Re-run it, now you should be able to connect on it with a standard Minecraft client, using localhost as an address. Tip: to change the Minecraft version you're playing with, change it in your profile (the first Minecraft screen, before you start the game) there's a dropdown where you can decide to stick to a given version.

Stop the game, either stop on the prompt or CTRL-C.

Installing Raspberry Juice

This is a plugin that is REQUIRED for the Python API to work. It should be installed in the plugins directory (typically /home/<user>/.pyminecraft/plugins.

https://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/raspberryjuice

cd $PYMINECRAFT/build
wget https://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/917/56/raspberryjuice-1.8.jar
cp raspberryjuice*jar $PYMINECRAFT/plugins/

Also switch to creative mode:

sed -i "s/gamemode.*/gamemode=1/g" $PYMINECRAFT/server.properties                # creative mode by default
sed -i "s/force-gamemode.*/force-gamemode=true/g" $PYMINECRAFT/server.properties # force creative mode

Install MCPI

cd $PYMINECRAFT/build
git clone https://github.com/py3minepi/py3minepi

Now, as root:

pip3 install ./py3minepi

Note: an old version, probably Python 2 compatible is available at: https://github.com/martinohanlon/mcpi

Final run

• start your server
• start a client, connect to localhost

From a Python (3!) prompt:

import mcpi.minecraft as minecraft
s=minecraft.Minecraft.create()
s.postToChat("hello world")

You might be interested by reading https://www.nostarch.com/programwithminecraft which is about how to learn programming with Python and Minecraft.

Freetype

• Additionnally, this program uses freetype-py https://github.com/rougier/freetype-py which you can simply install by pip install freetype-py.

DataDog

• Install the datadog python library https://github.com/DataDog/datadogpy
• You also need a DataDog account, along with an APP_KEY and an API_KEY. Refer to http://docs.datadoghq.com/api/ for details

Run the program

Once you are ready, the ./demo.sh shows an example of a possible launcher.

Basically:

python3 main.py <mydashboard.yml>

The program will expect elements such as the font to be in some precise path, so don't try to launch it from anywhere. For now.

Tuning

Most of the configuration options are available in the YAML file.

Some environnment vars matter:

• DATADOG_API_KEY: the API key
• DATADOG_APP_KEY: the APP key
• DATADOG_API_HOST: the API host (eg: https://app.datadoghq.com/ )
• DATADOG_DEMO_DATA: if set to True, the program won't query DataDog API and display random demo data instead instead of read-world data

Enjoy

Screenshots

Video

TODO

• make it more interactive, so that the "player" can act on the graph, acknowledge alerts...
• implement a cute white and purple Puppy that shows up with a dashboard hanging on his neck (killer feature!)
• ...