Copy the PhixFlow Webapp into Tomcat

To install the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat:

Copy $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Configure the Webapp

A number of configuration files must be copied from supplied templates and configured.

Configure phixflow-datasource.xml

The PhixFlow webapp must be configured to give access to the database user that has been created to hold the PhixFlow data.

Copy phixflow-datasource.xml.<database>.example to phixflow-datasource.xml, then

Edit the properties for <bean id="dataSource"..... For example:

<property name="url">
	<value>[CONNECTION STRING]</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
	<value>[USERNAME]</value>
</property>
<property name="password">
	<value>[PASSWORD]</value>
</property>

Connection Strings

The connection strings given here should cover most cases of connecting to PhixFlow's own database. For information about how connection strings are constructed for the various database platforms supported by PhixFlow, see Database URLs.

The platform-specific [CONNECTION STRING]s are:

Oracle:

jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521:phixflow

Oracle (> 12c with PDB containers):

jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521/phixflow

SQL Server:

jdbc:sqlserver://hostname\myservice;databaseName=phixflow

MySQL:

jdbc:mysql://hostname/phixflow

Configure phixflow-instance.xml

phixflow-instance.xml identifies the webapp instance in a resilient configuration and sets whether the instance is active on startup.

Initially, simply copy the example file phixflow-instance.xml.example to phixflow-instance.xml.

Configure phixflow-login.xml

The PhixFlow webapp can be configured to authenticate users’ usernames and passwords against an external Domain / Active Directory or SAML Single Sign-on server e.g. Active Directory Federation Services server.

Initially, simply copy the example file phixflow-login.xml.example to phixflow-login.xml.

Configure logback.xml 

The logback.xml file controls detailed event/error logging on the server.

Initially, simply copy the example file logback.xml.example to logback.xml.

For instructions on how to change the name of the log file generated, see below.

Please contact PhixFlow Support for instructions on how to integrate this into other logging frameworks (e.g. Google Cloud's stackdriver).

It is not normally necessary to make any further changes to this file unless so instructed by PhixFlow Support.

Configure phixflow-logging.xml

The phixflow-logging.xml file contains a list of directories that contain log files, and is used when downloading log files from the GUI.

Initially, simply copy the example file phixflow-login.xml.example to phixflow-login.xml.

It is not necessary to make any further changes to this file unless so instructed by PhixFlow Support.

Using Your own Logo in PhixFlow

Optionally, you can configure PhixFlow to display your own company logo. You need a vector graphic .svg file of your logo, renamed as customerLogo.svg (case sensitive). Add the file to  $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow/gui/images/

Multiple PhixFlow Webapps

To install multiple instances of PhixFlow on a single server, complete the installation steps above to create a first PhixFlow instance. Then install a further instance:

• Create a second database user to hold the data for the new instance.
• Copy the PhixFlow web application into the Tomcat again:

cp $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/mywebapp

where “mywebapp” is the name of your test system.

phixflow-datasource.xml

Be sure to set up a separate user and schema in the database for the new PhixFlow instance and to set phixflow-datasource.xml as needed.

logback.xml

My default, the settings in this file will send messages from all phixflow webapps to the same log file (phixflow.log); this can be confusing as it may not be clear which webapp has generated which messages, and for this reason we recommend that when installing multiple PhixFlow webapps in the same tomcat, you change each webapp to log to a separate log file, thus:

This example shows messages re-directed to mywebapp.log (and after daily rollover to mywebapp.yyyy-MM-dd.log).

... 
 <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <file>logs/mywebapp.log</file>
    <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">        
      <!-- daily rollover -->
      <fileNamePattern>logs/mywebapp.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log</fileNamePattern>
      <maxHistory>30</maxHistory>
    </rollingPolicy>
    <encoder>
      <pattern>%date %level [%thread] %logger{10} [%file:%line] %msg%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>
...