How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

[cpgood]

How do you launch, in a browser, a web app that is only produced locally? At this point the app is only in development so it is not being produced to a web server yet, it is only using the local web application server. When I produce the app I'm able to specify a page to be automatically launched once local production is completed. This works great. I'm having it launch my login page and the entire app works as designed. However, I'm interested in launching the produced app directly simply by using my web browser (Chrome). When I look in the c:\a5webroot folder I do not see any files in that folder or sub folders that I can launch in my browser. So I'm obviously missing some web component or page type or named page from my app. I tried to create an html page from within the web control panel and inserted my login component. I called the page index.html and then I produced the whole app locally. When this page launched I got a ton of html errors, so that was either the wrong thing to do or I executed poorly.

Thank you in advance for any one's help,

CP Good

[Steve Wood]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

You must publish the application to localwebroot to run it locally. You also cannot run a login component or any component inside an html page, it must be an A5W page. And just in case you are new to this, make sure you do not publish your application to the same folder where you keep your development files. The development files are NOT the same format as the published files, don't overwrite them.

[cpgood]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

Hi Steve

Thank you. Also thanks for correcting my use of "produced" instead of published. Yes, I am publishing to the local root. So to get this straight in my head the ONLY way to launch your web app in a browser when published locally is to do it during the publishing process, correct? And yes I am new to this. This is my first web app and it is going very well and I'm very impressed with the tools.

CP Good

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

As long as you have alpha running you can use any browser. Just type in: http://localhost/Test1 or whatever the name of your app is.

[kkfin]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

You also cannot run a login component or any component inside an html page, it must be an A5W page.

In Was settings you can configure Page extensions. You can add html or htm to the list if you want (or php and so on.). Then you can also run login components inside html page if you want.

[Steve Wood]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

In Was settings you can configure Page extensions

Yes you can do that on the WAS General tab. I can only see this on an absolute must-do situation, whatever that would be. It means that the WAS will process all .htm pages (for example) through its processor, slowing the application down. It also means that "htm" page, that is really an A5W page by another name, would not be visible in the project under the A5W Pages folder, and you would have to manage that file under the All Files folder.

[kkfin]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

Yes you can do that on the WAS General tab. I can only see this on an absolute must-do situation, whatever that would be. It means that the WAS will process all .htm pages (for example) through its processor, slowing the application down.

You can read this that using any .a5w page will slow down your application but I know you don't mean it. Anyway I use xbasic when I need to use it. I don't think that it will slow down my application.
But the real point is that you can use any page extension with Alphas xbasic if you want or need. Developer has choice to decide. I think this is just a good think.

[Lenny Forziati]

Re: How to Launch Web App that is only Produced Locally

You can read this that using any .a5w page will slow down your application but I know you don't mean it. Anyway I use xbasic when I need to use it. I don't think that it will slow down my application.
But the real point is that you can use any page extension with Alphas xbasic if you want or need. Developer has choice to decide. I think this is just a good think.

Serving a purely static file (*.htm) will always be a bit faster than a dynamic file (*.a5w), even with the exact same content. The difference in speed may be imperceptible in basic testing on a lightly loaded server, but there is far more work being done by the server in order to set up a context (including a Session, Request, Response) and execute the page instead of just streaming it off of disk to the client. In a deployed application with many simultaneous users, the difference could become significant.

This is no different than working with PHP or ASP/ASPX. In those environments you should also use *.htm for purely static content and not make those servers work harder to do nothing extra either. To use the active page extension for everything is akin to having all of your hockey players dressed in full goalie gear - they are ready to take the full impact of a slapshot directed anywhere at them, but the extra gear slows them down unnecessarily.

If you have pages that will not have any Xbasic code in them at all, it would be best to maintain the *.htm extension for them and not configure the server to treat them as A5W pages.