PhixFlow Help

Install the PhixFlow Webapp

Owned by Gary Parden
Last updated: Jul 30, 2020 by Fiona Sargeant (Unlicensed)
3 min read

Step1  Copy the PhixFlow Webapp into Tomcat

To install the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat:

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

Step 2  Create Configuration Files

Copy the following example configuration files and, where required, update them for your system.

The files are in $TOMCAT/webapps/$WEBAPP/WEB-INF/classes

phixflow-instance.xml

Copy the example file phixflow-instance.xml.example to phixflow-instance.xml.

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

phixflow-datasource.xml

The PhixFlow webapp must be configured to provide user access to the PhixFlow database. In phixflow-datasource.xml, enter an alias username and password. The actual username and password are stored in an encrypted keystore; see Configure a Keystore for Database Credentials.

  1. Copy phixflow-datasource.xml.<database>.example to phixflow-datasource.xml.
  2. Edit the properties for <bean id="dataSource"...  (shown below).
  3. Enter the alias for the database:
    • username
    • and password.
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<property name="url">
	<value>CONNECTION-STRING</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
	<value>ALIAS-USERNAME</value>
</property>
<property name="password">
	<value>ALIAS-PASSWORD</value>
</property>

4. Replace the temporary values with:

  • USERNAME: the database user's name.
  • PASSWORD: the database user's password.
  • CONNECTION-STRING: this depends on the database platform, and is one of: 

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

MariaDB:  jdbc:mariadb://localhost/phixflow

These strings 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.

phixflow-secret.xml

If you have not already done so Configure a Keystore for Database Credentials. Use phixflow-secret.xml to specify the keystore details.

phixflow-login.xml 

Copy the example file phixflow-login.xml.example to phixflow-login.xml.

You will use this file if you need to configure PhixFlow to authenticate users’ usernames and passwords against an external domain, or Active Directory, or a SAML Single Sign-on server, such as the Active Directory Federation Services server. For more information, see the pages in the User Administration topic.

logback.xml 

Copy the example file logback.xml.example to logback.xml.

The logback.xml file controls detailed event/error logging on the server. You only need to change this file:

  • to rename the log file if you have multiple PhixFlow instances; see Renaming the Log File, below.
  • to change the logging level when troubleshooting; see Server Log Files
  • as requested by PhixFlow Support.

Changes to logback.xml take effect within a one or two minutes. You do not need to restart the Tomcat servlet.

phixflow-logging.xml 

Copy the example file phixflow-logging.xml.example to 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. You only need to change this file as requested by PhixFlow Support.

Using Your own Logo in PhixFlow

Optionally, you can configure PhixFlow to display your own company logo. The logo must be a vector graphic .svg file with the name customerLogo.svg (case sensitive). Add the file to  $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow/gui/images/

Step 3  Restart Tomcat

Whenever you make changes in $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow, remember to restart Tomcat, so that the changes are used.

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:

  1. Create a second database user to hold the data for the new instance.
  2. Copy the PhixFlow web application into the Tomcat again:
cp $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/<mywebapp>

where <mywebapp> is the name of your new instance.

Remember to set up a separate user and schema in the database for the new PhixFlow instance and to configure phixflow-datasource.xml with the user, password and connection-string.

Renaming the Log File

For logback.xml, by default, the settings send messages from all PhixFlow webapps to the same log file, phixflow.log. When you have multiple instances, it is not clear which webapp has generated the messages. In this case, we recommend that you change each webapp to log into a separate log file.

For each instance, edit the logback.xml file and change the instance name to something unique. The following example uses the name mywebapp:

  • on line 3: messages are re-directed initially to logs/mywebapp.log
  • on line 6: messages re-directed after daily rollover to logs/mywebapp.yyyy-MM-dd.log.
logback.xml
... 
 <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>
...






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