Oxygen XML Forum

Hi,
I’ve followed your instructions to install and deploy webhelp-feedback output, and we now want to roll that out so that all our documentation is hosted internally, but I can’t find much information about how this might work in practice.
In particular I’m wondering:

• Given that we have about 400+ guides, is there a way I can install and deploy en masse?
• How do I remove/uninstall a module/transformation folder?

Many thanks,
Maggie

Hello,

You can avoid the installation procedure in the browser and in the MySQL database for all but one of the 400+ guides by duplicating the configuration file that results from the first installation for the rest of the 400+ installations. However this is possible only if either:

• you use the same product name and the same database connection details for the user comments in all guides,
• you have a way of automatically generating the product name and database connection details (host, username, password) for all guides.

First you complete and verify in the browser the deployment and installation of the first guide. The configuration file that stores the installation choices is located at WEBHELP_DEPLOYMENT_DIR/oxygen-webhelp/resources/php/config/config.php. If you use the same product name and the same database connection details for all 400+ guides then you just duplicate for each guide the config file of the first intallation and modify only the __BASE_URL__ and __BASE_PATH__ values in each config file. These two values store the base directory of the deployment location.

If you use different product names or different database connection details you will have to modify also the following values in each duplicated config file:

• $dbConnectionInfo['dbName']
• $dbConnectionInfo['dbUser']
• $dbConnectionInfo['dbPassword']
• $dbConnectionInfo['dbHost']

In the same automatic batch process that creates the duplicated config files you should also remove the install sub-directory of the __BASE_PATH__ directory for each guide, which basically amounts to completing the deployment and installation for that guide.


If you need also to update the 400+ guides frequently by re-running the WebHelp-Feedback transformation in Oxygen and you need a faster way than repeating frequently the WebHelp transformation 400+ times in Oxygen please let me know and I can give you more details about running the WebHelp transformation from a command line or from an automatic process/build system.


Regards,
Sorin

Hi Sorin,

Great, thanks for such a quick and helpful response. I can completely see how a simple script to duplicate the config.php file and replacing just some specific values will be really useful to us. We already run the transforms through an automated build system, so this can easily be hooked in.

My other question was about uninstalling - what if after deployment one or more guides become redundant and we'd like to uninstall the feedback-enabled output? I have tried deleting from the database, but on re-installing, the comment counter was incorrect, so I'm not sure everything was deleted properly. Is there an easier way to uninstall?

Many thanks,
Maggie

Hi Maggie,

Yes, deleting the user comments from the Webhelp table on the MySQL server is the way to go. If you have a different database name for each guide it is even simpler: just drop the whole Webhelp database from the MySQL server. Otherwise (if you merge all user comments from all guides into the comments table of the same database as specified in the Database Name in the installation wizard for each guide) you will have to remove the user comments selectively based on the product name and version number of the guide that you want to uninstall/remove.

Do you mean the commentId field of the table that holds the user comments was not reset to 1 although you selected the Create new database structure option in the second installation? I think the commentId count was not reset to 1 because you used the same database name on the second installation and the MySQL server remembers the last value of the commentId field from the previous database with the same name (which uses the InnoDB storage engine).

This should not be a problem since the old MySQL table (from the first installation of the Webhelp-Feedback system) with all the user comments was dropped by the second installation, so the user comments from the first installation are gone, because you selected the Create new database structure option on the second installation. If you need to have the comment counter reset to 1 in the MySQL table you should select a different value for Database Name on the second installation.


Regards,
Sorin