Cincom VisualWorks Web Toolkit Tutorial : Configuring Web Toolkit Sites

Configuring Web Toolkit Sites

In the previous lesson, we manually configued a sandbox site. However, the sandbox site will "disappear" if the web server is shutdown and you exit VisualWorks. In this lesson, you will identify specific Web Toolkit configuation files so that it is not necessary to manually configure sites each time the Web Toolkit is launched.

This lesson explains how to "permanently" configure Web Toolkit sites so that they will always appear on the Web Toolkit Configuration home page.

1. If VisualWorks is not already running, please start running it now.

2. Create another directory called teach under the web directory (which in the previous lesson you have already created a directory called sandbox).

3. For every directory under the web directory, create an “INI” file with the same name as the directory plus “-site.ini” in the web directory. For example, since our site directories are called sandbox and teach, the “INI” files would be sandbox-site.ini and teach-site.ini respectively.

Figure 1. Creating the directories and the INI files

4. Using your favorite text editor, create these 2 “INI” files using the examples shown below.

Figure 2. The contents of the 2 “INI” files

5. Once the “site ini” files have been created, edit the webtools.ini file (in the web directory). Again, using your favorite text editor, add 2 additional lines in the [sites] section of the file (very bottom). See the example below.

Figure 3. Editing the webtools.ini file

6. If you have not yet loaded the Web Toolkit parcel, please do so and and start a WaveHTTPRequestBroker. Minimize all VisualWorks windows and open your favorite web browser. Proceed to step 8.

7. If you have already loaded the Web Toolkit parcel and have already started a WaveHTTPRequestBroker (before you have created and edited these INI files), then perform the following steps:

From the Web Toolkit Configuration Home page, click the Manage Server link
From the Server Management page, click the Reset Configuration link
From the Reset Configuration : COMPLETE page, click the OK link
On the Configuration Details page, you will see all configured sites. Note that the sandbox site and the teach site are listed.

8. Open your favorite browser to the following URL: http://localhost:8008

Figure 4. The Web Toolkit Configuration Main Page showing our 2 "permanent" sites

Congratulations!
The teach and sandbox sites are now permanently configured. This means that if you exit VisualWorks (without saving anything), re-launch VisualWorks, load the Web Toolkit parcel and start a Wave HTTP server, proceed to the http://localhost:8008 URL, you will still see the teach and sandbox sites.

Later in the tutorial, we will further edit these configuration files in order to enable certain attributes of the sites.

You should now be able to:

	Identify Web Toolkit configuration files
	Properly edit the configuration files so that VisualWave has a permanent knowledge of the parameters of Web Toolkit sites
	Force VisualWave to re-read the “INI” files and re-configure all sites accordingly