What is Valeros?
Valeros is a reusable, flexible heritage data browser.
It is designed as a standard solution for targeted search and browsing and discovery of heritage data. See the Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed (NDE) user profiles publication for more information about these types of users and their needs.
As a developer, Valeros lets you control what, how, and when data is shown to end users through simple configuration files (see Configuration System).
Key Features
Search & Discovery
- Full-text search - Find heritage objects across all indexed fields
- Faceted filtering - Narrow results by categories like date, location, or type
- Autocomplete - Get suggestions as you type
- Sorting - Order results by relevance, date, or custom criteria
- Connected heritage - Discover related objects that share the same terms, people, or places
Data Presentation
- Flexible layouts - Display results as lists, grids, maps, or create your own views
- Built-in widgets - Ready-to-use components for maps, images, IIIF viewers, and more, or create your own
- Detail pages - Dedicated pages for individual heritage objects with rich metadata
- IIIF support - View high-resolution images with zoom and pan capabilities
- Source provenance - Always link back to the original data source for transparency
Architecture
Tech Stack
Valeros is built with Angular following the Angular style guide. We use modern Angular features including signals for reactive state management, standalone components, and control flow syntax. For styling, we use TailwindCSS with DaisyUI as the component library.
Data & Presentation Layers
TODO
Add a Mermaid diagram here to visualize the architecture
Valeros follows the NDE vision of explicit separation between data and presentation layers:
- The data layer retrieves datasets registered in the NDE Dataset Register and provides a standardized API. By default, Valeros works with a hosted demo implementation (see this repo for self-hosting), but you can also implement your own data layer following the API specification.
- The presentation layer (this project, Valeros) consumes the API and allows configuration of how data is displayed.
INFO
Both the demo data layer implementation and the API specification are currently under active development by NDE.