Generative Design Code Package (for P5.js)

Hi! This GitHub repository contains all of the source code for the book Generative Design: Creative Coding for the Web with JavaScript in p5.js. To get started, please follow the intructions in the sections: Setup and Running the Sketches. Enjoy!

Authors:

Benedikt Groß
Hartmut Bohnacker
Julia Laub
Claudius Lazzeroni

with contributions by:

Joey Lee
Niels Poldervaart

Setup

The setup allows you to download the dependencies related to contributing changes to the project (e.g. generative-design-library.js). It also allows you to run a local web server using node. If any of that sounds too foreign or is not of interest and you just want to run the sketches, jump down to Running the Sketches.

Install node.js (go for the latest stable version)
Open Terminal and navigate over to the Code-Package-p5.js folder that you downloaded onto your computer:

$ cd path/to/folder
# e.g. cd /Users/GG/Documents/Code-Package-p5.js

Run:

$ npm install

Running the Sketches

While most of the sketches work without running a local webserver, there are some sketches that will not run properly since they use external files² (e.g. images or data) to create and inform the visualization. To run the sketches, you are welcome to use a local webserver of your liking.

There are many ways to start a local webserver. Please see the options below (not in any particular order)

Option 1

One method is to to use the local webserver of your choice (e.g. simple python webserver) and open up localhost:<port>in your browser¹.

$ cd path/to/folder
# e.g. cd /Users/GG/Documents/Code-Package-p5.js

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
# check localhost:8000

Option 2

If you've already followed the instructions in the Setup section and you're using Node.js, you can follow the instructions below:

Start a local web server (with live reload) by typing in your Terminal or Commandline the command below. This will open the index.html file (list of all sketches) a new browser window.

$ npm start

Click on any of the links 🔗 listed to view and interact with the sketches.
Interact, create, save, and share your work! 🌈#GenerativeGestaltung #generativedesign #p5js

¹The default port is 8000, but you can change the port number by specifying the number after the command e.g. python -m SimpleHTTPServer 5000

²Some sketches work only as expected when the files are placed online, as the rely on "security" sensitive functionality like loading external files. If you try to view them locally without running a web server, you get some kind of "cross-origin" errors 😭 (see your browser's console). The solution is to serve the files using what's called a local web server. This is what happens when you run npm start as shown above or when you run your own local server.

License

All of the book's source code is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0

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