This document covers the following topics:
A Natural for Ajax application consists of two parts that are usually installed on two different machines.
On one hand, there are Natural modules (adapters, programs, subprograms and other Natural objects) that are installed on a Natural server. On the other hand, there are page layouts of rich GUI pages and related files that are installed in a Natural for Ajax environment on an application server.
The Natural modules that belong to your application are contained in one or several Natural libraries in your Natural development environment. Unload them into a file, using the Object Handler.
In order to install the Natural modules in the production environment, load them with the Object Handler.
Your web application might contain one or more user interface components.
In production environments it is deeply recommended to always deploy/refresh the whole web application for consistency.
In development or test environments you sometimes might want to deploy single user interface components into an already deployed web application. To deploy global files such as custom controls, which are used by several user interface components or configuration files like the cisconfig.xml file (which is used for the whole web application), you have to use web application deployment/refreshment as described in the following sections.
User interface components are stored in subdirectories of your web application.
You only need to package those files of your user interface component which are not generation results. All files which are generation results will be generated by the Natural for Ajax runtime during deployment. If you also package files which are generation results, the Natural for Ajax runtime system will ignore these files.
If you are using NaturalONE, use the Ant war deployment wizard to create an Ant file which will package your user interface component(s). To package a user interface component for deployment without NaturalONE, add all files and subdirectories to an archive using an archiving tool like WinZip or tar. Do not include the following files and folders:
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| <use interfacedir>/*.html | Generated HTML pages. |
| <use interfacedir>/wsdl/*.* | Generated data schemas. |
| <use interfacedir>/nat | Generated Natural code |
| <use interfacedir>/protocol | Generated protocol files |
| <use interfacedir>/styles/<mystylesheet>.css | Style sheet files that are generated from a Natural for Ajax *.info file |
Provide a unique name for the created zip file. This can for example be done by appending date or timestamp to the file name. Example: <myui>20170501.zip.
In order to deploy the user interface components, simply copy the zip file which you created as described previously into the _uiupdates folder of your web application, for example: <tomcatfolder>/webapps/<mywebapp>/_uiupdates/<myui>20170501.zip.
By default the Natural Ajax runtime system will pick up the file every 5 seconds. This
value can be customized with the monitoringthreadinterval parameter. It will deploy
it and refresh all internal caches of the Natural Ajax runtime system. For the example
above, deployment and refreshing is finished when a file with the name
<tomcatfolder>/webapps/<mywebapp>/_uiupdates/<myui>20170501/update.result
exists. It is important to check the update.result file for errors:
Open the file and look for "Update finished Successfully". If
you cannot find this, check the *.protocol files in the
protocol sub folder for errors and/or exceptions.
In case you cannot solve the generation problems via the Layout Painter error marking,
you can switch on the creation of additional log files. See the htmlgeneratorlog
attribute in the Ajax Configuration section.
Natural for Ajax is delivered as a web application (.war file). This allows for packaging and deploying also your own applications (more exactly: the user interface components thereof) as self-contained web applications. The preferred way to create a *.war for your application is to use the Ant war deployment wizard of NaturalONE.
If you are not using NaturalONE:
To package your application as a web application
Invoke the Application Designer development workplace.
In the Development Tools node of the navigation frame (which is visible when the button has previously been chosen), choose WAR Packager.
In the resulting dialog, make sure that the Deployment Scenario tab is selected.
Define the generation type by selecting one of the following option buttons: with file system reference or fully clusterable. See the Application Designer documentation for detailed information on these generation types.
Note:
The option fully clusterable applies only for web
applications written in Java, not for those written in Natural. This is because a
Natural-written application runs on a Natural server and therefore needs to keep a
TCP/IP connection to the server, while Java applications are executed on the web
container itself.
If you selected with file system reference, enable the Switch off Design Time check box.
Select the Project Selection tab.
Select the project directories that you want to include in your web archive. These must be at least the following:
| Directory | Description |
|---|---|
| cis | Application Designer configuration files. |
| cisnatural | Natural for Ajax logon page and related pages. |
| HTMLBasedGUI | HTML user interface. |
| images | Application Designer image files. |
| META-INF | Standard directory in a web application. |
| resources | Natural Web I/O Interface style sheets and related files. |
| scripts | Natural Web I/O Interface JavaScript files. |
| WEB-INF | Standard directory in a web application. |
In addition, you have to select your own project directories.
In the text box WAR File to be created, specify a path and name for the web application to be created.
Choose the Create WAR button.
The web application (.war file) is created.
To deploy your application
You deploy your web application in the same way as you deployed Natural for Ajax itself (see Installation).
After you have deployed your web application, you can use the configuration tool to specify the configuration for this specific application. For further information, see Natural Client Configuration Tool.
Start the configuration tool with the following URL:
http://<host>:<port>/<webcontext>/conf_index.jsp
The logon page of the application can be found here:
http:// <host>:<port>/<webcontext>/servlet/StartCISPage?PAGEURL=/cisnatural/NatLogon.html
Note:
<webcontext> denotes the web context of your
application. On Apache Tomcat, this is the name of the .war
file, without the extension .war. On IBM WebSphere, this is the
value you specified as the web context during the deployment.
You can generate HTML pages using the command line (either single pages or entire projects). If you do this, you have to reload your web application afterwards or - in a development environment - use the monitoring tool to refresh the internal caches.
An Ant file named generate.xml is available for this purpose. After the installation, you can find it in the support/ant directory.
The Ant file has the following major targets:
info
Shows the syntax of this Ant task.
project
Generates all HTML pages for a given project.
page
Generates a single HTML file for a given page in a project.
pages
Generates HTML files for given pages in a project.
style
Generates CSS files for info files in a project
The following call explains the targets with their mandatory and optional parameters:
ant -f generate.xml info
By default, the following log files are written during the HTML generation:
For a layout named mylayout.xml a file named
mylayout.protocol is created in the protocol
subdirectory of the user interface component. It contains the error messages, warning
messages and information messages for the controls in the layout. Open the layout with
the Layout Painter Editor to position at the erroneous controls.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <pro:protocol xmlns:pro="http://www.softwareag.com/cis/protocol"> <pro:lineitem> <pro:id>6</pro:id> <pro:tag>field</pro:tag> <pro:message> <pro:severity>Error</pro:severity> <pro:mtext>Property VALUEPROP is not set</pro:mtext> </pro:message> <pro:message> <pro:severity>Warning</pro:severity> <pro:mtext>One of the properties LENGTH or WIDTH should be set</pro:mtext> </pro:message> </pro:lineitem> <pro:summary errors='1' warnings='1' infos='0' ></pro:summary> </pro:protocol>
When generating all layouts of a user interface component, additionally a file named HTMLGeneratorWholeDirectory.log is created in the log subdirectory of the user interface component. It contains the names of the generated layouts and the information, whether an error occurred.
... Starting generation of wpworkplacelan1.xml... ...finished Starting generation of wpworkplacelan2.xml... ...finished Starting generation of xmldatamode.xml... ...finished Starting generation of xmldatamode2.xml... ...finished ========================================= 227 layouts generated 1 layouts with ERROR
In addition to the above, you can activate the creation of an individual .log file for each layout. This file contains generation details.
To switch on the log file creation, set htmlgeneratorlog="true" in the
cisconfig.xml file. Only activate this option, if you need to
analyze generation problems, as it reduces generation performance. The additional
.log files are created in the log
subdirectory of the user interface component. The htmlgeneratorlog option
is described in General
cisconfig.xml Parameters of the Ajax
Configuration section.