You can use the Text Display widget to show text in the user interface. The text appears in the Text Display widget on the dashboard.

The Text Display widget can read text from a Web page or text file. You specify the URL of the Web page or the name of the text file when you configure the Text widget. To use the Text Display widget to read text files you must set a property in the web.properties file to specify the root folder that contains the file.

You can enter content in the Text Display widget in plain text or rich text format based on the view mode that you configure. Configure the Text Display widget in HTML view mode to display content in rich text format. Configure the Text Display widget in Text mode to display content in plain text format.

The Text Display widget can display websites that use the HTTPS protocol. The behavior of the Text Display widget with websites that use HTTP, depends on the individual settings of the websites.
Note: If the webpage that you are linking to has X-Frame-Options set to sameorigin, which denies rendering a page in an iframe, the Text Display widget cannot display the contents of the webpage.

How the Text Display Widget Configuration Options Work

You can configure the widget in the Text view mode or HTML view mode. In the HTML view mode, you can click Edit in the widget and use the rich text editor to add content.

If you configure the widget to use Text view mode, you can specify the path to the directory that contains the files to read or you can provide a URL. The content in the URL will be shown as text. If you do not specify a URL or text file, you can add content in the widget. Double-click the widget and enter content in plain text.

You can also use command-line interface (CLI) commands to add file content to the Text Display widget.
  • To view a list of parameters, run the file -h|import|export|delete|list txtwidget command.
  • To import text or HTML content, run the import txtwidget input-file [--title title] [--force] command.
  • To export the content to the file, run the export txtwidget all|title[{,title}] [output-dir] command.
  • To delete imported content, run the delete txtwidget all|title[{,title}] command.
  • To view the titles of the content, run the list txtwidget command.

Where You Find the Text Display Widget

The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards to see your configured dashboards.

To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select Actions > Edit. Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.

Text Display Widget Configuration Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.

The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.

The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.

Option Description
Title

Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template.

Configuration
Refresh Content

Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget.

If not activated, the widget is updated only when the dashboard is opened or when you click the Refresh button on the widget in the dashboard.
Refresh Interval

If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget.
Self Provider
Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget.
  • On. You define the objects for which data appears in the widget.
  • Off. You configure other widgets to provide the objects to the widget using the dashboard widget interactions options.
View mode

Display text in text or rich text format. You can configure the widget in HTML view mode only when the URL and File fields are blank.

URL

Enter the URL.

File

Navigate to the file that contains the source text file by clicking the Select button.

To add, edit, and remove source text files, go to the TxtWidgetContent node in the Configuration Files page. From the left menu, click Configure > Configuration Files, from the VMware Aria Operations user interface.
Test

Validates the correctness of the text file or URL that you enter.