# Aladin Lite v3
**An astronomical HiPS visualizer in the browser** 
Aladin Lite is a Web application which enables HiPS visualization from the browser. It is developed at [CDS, Strasbourg astronomical data center](http://cds.unistra.fr/).
See [A&A 578, A114 (2015)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02291) and [IVOA HiPS Recommendation](http://ivoa.net/documents/HiPS/index.html) for more details about the HiPS standard.
Aladin Lite is built to be easily embeddable in any web page. It powers astronomical portals like [ESASky](https://sky.esa.int/), [ESO Science Archive portal](http://archive.eso.org/scienceportal/) and [ALMA Portal](https://almascience.eso.org/asax/).
More details on [Aladin Lite documentation page](http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite/doc/).
[](https://github.com/cds-astro/aladin-lite/actions/workflows/test.yml)
[](https://cds-astro.github.io/aladin-lite)
# How to test it ?
Aladin Lite v3 is out! Please play with [Aladin Lite v3 at this link](https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite).
## Releases
For integrating Aladin Lite into your personal website, please refer to this [release page](https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/doc/release/).
Always prefer using the latest version. If you want the new features without minding about the bugs coming with it, then the beta is the good way to go.
## API documentation
There is a new in progress API documentation at [this link](https://cds-astro.github.io/aladin-lite).
## Embed it into your projects
You can embed Aladin Lite it into your webpages in two ways
### The vanilla way
Please include [the javascript script of Aladin Lite v3](https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/api/v3/latest/aladin.js) into your project. API differences from the v2 are minimal, here is a snippet of code you can use to embed it into your webpages:
```js
```
### Using the aladin lite NPM package
First, install it with npm:
```npm i aladin-lite```
Second, you can use it that way:
```js
```
## Goals of v3
- Rust/WebGL new core integration
- Remove jQuery dep
- UI dev, better support for smartphones
- FITS images support
- easy sharing of current « view »
- support of all VOTable serializations (using votable.js?)
- support of FITS tables?
- creating HiPS instance from an URL
- multiple mirrors handling for HiPS tile retrival
## Source code
Source code is available in the ``src`` directory.
## Licence
Aladin Lite is currently licensed under GPL v3.0
If you think this license might prevent you from using Aladin Lite in your pages/application/portal, please open an issue or [contact us](mailto:cds-question@unistra.fr)
## Contributing
There are several ways to contribute to Aladin Lite:
- **report a bug**: anyone is welcome to open an issue to report a bug. Please make sure first the issue does not exist yet. Be as specific as possible, and provide if possible detailed instructions about how to reproduce the problem.
- **suggest a new feature**: if you feel something is missing, check first if a similar feature request has not already been submitted in the open issues. If not, open a new issue, and give a detailed explanation of the feature you wish.
- **develop new features/provide code fixing bugs**. As open development is a new thing for us, we will in a first time only take into consideration code contribution (_i.e._ Pull Requests) from our close partners.
In any case, please get in touch before starting a major update or rewrite.
### Building the application steps
First you need to install the dependencies from the package.json
Please run:
```bash
npm install
```
After that you are supposed to have the Rust toolchain installed
to compile the core project into WebAssembly.
Follow the steps from the Rust official website [here](https://www.rust-lang.org/learn/get-started)
You will also need [wasm-pack](https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/), a tool helping compiling rust into a proper .wasm file.
Once it's installed you will need to switch to the nightly rust version:
```bash
rustup default nightly
```
Then you can build the project:
```bash
npm run build
```
:warning: **If you are experimenting rust error compilations**:
- Make sure you have your **wasm-pack** version updated. To do so:
```bash
cargo install wasm-pack --version ~0.12
```
- Make sure you are using the rust **nightly** toolchain
- Remove your `src/core/Cargo.lock` file and `src/core/target` directory -- this ensures that you'd escape any bad compilation state:
```bash
git clean -di
```
- then recompile with `npm run build`.
It will generate the aladin lite compiled code into a `dist/` directory located at the root of the repository. This directory contains two javascript files. `aladin.umd.cjs` follows the UMD module export convention and it is the one you can use for your project.
To run the examples, you can start a localhost server with the following command:
```bash
npm run serve
```
For just compiling the rust core, from the root location do:
```bash
cd src/core
cargo check --features webgl2
```
and run the tests:
```bash
cd src/core
cargo test --features webgl2
```