war file anyone?

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Gerold Krommer
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:09 pm

war file anyone?

Unread post by Gerold Krommer »

Hi,

this is actually not a HM7 sepcific question, but since I hope for the most attention ....

We are creating documentation for customers using mainly IBM WebSphere AS (partly because it comes free with our application).
Now I learned that it is not so easy to serve static content (like WebHelp) from WebSphere AS. Prefered way is using a war file.

I checked and there is a way/trick/hack to serve static content from IHS (basically Apache) but it is also ugly.

Has anyone written a little script (or are there plans for an export option) to create a war file from the WebHelp output.
In addition I would find it just convenient to pass around a single file instead of a gazillion small files.

Thanks for any insight,

/Gerold
Gerold Krommer
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:09 pm

Re: war file anyone?

Unread post by Gerold Krommer »

Not quite the attention I hoped for ... :-)

Nevermind. I wrote a little script that creates a static war file and I was able to successfully deploy it on a WebSphere App Server 8.5.5.

I will post the script and steps as soon as I get a little time.

Regards,

/gerold
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Martin Wynne
Posts: 2656
Joined: Mon May 12, 2003 3:21 pm
Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: war file anyone?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Gerold Krommer wrote:Not quite the attention I hoped for ... :-)
Hi Gerold,

It would have helped if you had provided some links. I have never heard of a war file, and I imagine I'm not the only one.

Also, it would have been better to post in the Programmers Corner forum: http://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewforum.php?f=17

regards,

Martin.
Gerold Krommer
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:09 pm

Re: war file anyone?

Unread post by Gerold Krommer »

Hi,

your comment made me realize that help autors probably never get to know where their work is going to end up...

So here it goes: Web Help needs a Web Server to be displayed properly. For easy testing HM provides a mini server along with the autoring tool (HM2GO).
Other web servers to name a few are Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish (open source and yes, I know the difference between Web and App Server) and Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere Application Server (commercial).

In simpler implementations as Tomcat it is basically enough to copy your HTML output to the proper place. The server will dedect the new files and dutyfully display them to you.
In big, business critical environments this is considered not to be 'enterprise style'. This is -of course- subject to religion... :-(

They require a war or ear file.

A war (web archive) File contains files of a web project. It may have servlet, xml, jsp, image, html, css, js etc. files. Furthermore it contains XML files that describe the contents of the war file.

Basically it is a zip file of all contents (so webhelp is one single file) but usually created with the java 'jar' tool. Using the management interface of your Server (in IBMs case it it called WAS console) you install ('deploy') the war file to the server (also possible remotely).

If you have java installed creating a war file from Web Help output is a two liner, but still I was surprised nobody ever asked for it. I never tought this could be a programmers question as no coding is involved, just 'packaging'.

Hope this clarifies things,

/Gerold
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Martin Wynne
Posts: 2656
Joined: Mon May 12, 2003 3:21 pm
Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: war file anyone?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Gerold Krommer wrote:If you have java installed creating a war file from Web Help output is a two liner, but still I was surprised nobody ever asked for it. Hope this clarifies things
Hi Gerold,

Not really. On my server I create a folder for the project and upload all the files into it. That method has worked fine for 20 years and is the way H&M Webhelp output works. It also means that only modified files need to be uploaded. If I was to upload the entire content in some form of zipped archive file I just know that I would get a lot of grief from users saying they couldn't open it. No doubt there is a function in cPanel to unzip an uploaded file server-side, but I have never needed it.

If the work required is a "two liner" I'm wondering why you are asking for help with it?

regards,

Martin.
Gerold Krommer
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 12:09 pm

Re: war file anyone?

Unread post by Gerold Krommer »

The two liner was preceded by 3 hours of research :-)
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