Level: Intermediate Angel Vera (arvera@ca.ibm.com), Software Engineer, WebSphere Studio Support, IBM Toronto Lab, IBM
01 Feb 2004 While the WebSphere Studio online help system is an excellent resource for finding information, accessing it from inside the product is not always efficient. Each time you search the help in a new workspace, it takes several minutes to index the files, and some teams may not want to install the documentation on every workstation. This article explains how to avoid these problems by running the help outside the product as a standalone Java application, which can improve access to the help and provide additional options in using it.
Introduction
The online help in IBM ® WebSphere® Studio Application Developer V5 (hereafter called Application Developer) is a great resource for finding samples, tutorials, instructions for completing common tasks, conceptual information, and much more. The online help is extensible -- the WebSphere Studio support information plug-in enables you to add more resources to the help. For more information about the support information plug-in, see Adding self-help support to WebSphere Studio tools by extending their Eclipse help systems.
With so many help topics available, you might find it difficult to find the topic you're looking for. You can search the help by simply entering a search string in the Search field and clicking Go. To narrow the scope of your search, select Advanced Search and specify the scope of your search.
The first time you use the search function in a workspace, a couple of minutes are required to index the search topics. If you frequently use multiple workspaces, waiting for search to index the files each time can be an annoyance. The avoid this situation, you can install the help system as a standalone application, or if you have a spare application server, you can install the help as a Web application and access it from any browser on any computer. The help will then be available to you all the time and you won't have to wait for the help system to open each time you want to use help.
The help system is part of the Eclipse platform and can be run in three different ways:
- Inside Application Developer: select Help => Help Contents from the menu bar.
- As a standalone Java™ application: run it from a
.bat file.
- As a Web application: access it via a servlet if you install the help system on a J2EE application server such as WebSphere Application Server V5.
Running help from within WebSphere Studio
After you open the help, you will see that the Application developer information book contains instructions on using the tools included in the product:
Running help as a standalone Java application
To run the help as a standalone Java application:
- Open a command line.
- Change directory to
X:\installdir\eclipse\plugins, where x:\installdir is the drive and directory where you installed Application Developer.
- Set your classpath to include
X:\installdir\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_version\help.jar where _version is the most recent version of the plug-in.
- Type
java org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help "X:\installdir\eclipse\plugins
(do not include a backslash ( \ ) after the plugins directory).
The main method of org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help will create a small AWT window with two buttons: Context help and Help. Either button will open a window that lets you see the contents of the help in any browser:
By default, the help will start on a random available port. If you want the help to run on a specific port, change the
port=0 line inside the org.eclipse.tomcat_version\preferences.ini file.
For more information about using the help system as a standalone application, see eclipse.org and the development resources at the Help platform Web site.
Running help on WebSphere Application Server V5
To deploy the help system on WebSphere Application Server:
- Download the ZIP file that contains the WAR file that you will install on WebSphere Application Server.
- Unzip the file to a temporary directory, for example
C:\temp.
- Change the value of the location of the plug-ins that are part of the help system.
- Start the Application Assembly Tool by selecting Start => Programs => IBM WebSphere => Application Server v5.0 =>
Application Assembly Tool:
- Select the Existing tab and browse to
C:\temp to select the WAR file.
- When the file opens, select Context Parameters from the left-hand view.
- From the right-hand view, edit the
ECLIPSE_HOME parameter and enter the
location of the parent plugins directory. Do note include a backslash ( \ ) at the end of the path.
- Save the file.
- Exit the Application Assembly Tool.
Installing the WAR file
Install the WAR file by following these steps:
- Start the Administrative Console by selecting Start => Program Files >
IBM WebSphere => Application Server v5.0 => Administrative Console.
- Enter your user ID and click OK.
- Expand Applications => Install New Application from the menu on the left side of the page.
- Browse to the temporary directory in which you downloaded the WAR file.
- Choose a context root for your application.
- Accept the defaults and click Next:
- Select the Pre-compile JSP checkbox.
- Accept the defaults on the next three dialogs by clicking Next on each page.
- Click Finish to end the installation of the WAR file.
- Save the configuration by selecting Save to Master Configuration => Save.
Installing eclipseurl.jar
The eclipseurl.jar file contains classes that translate the URL requests that the help issues to the actual file on the file system. You will find the eclipseurl.jar file inside X:\installdir\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_version.
Follow these steps to add eclipseurl.jar to the classpath of the Application Server:
- Expand Servers on the left side of the WebSphere Administrative Console.
- Select the server you wish to use.
- Scroll to and select Process Definition.
- Click Java Virtual Machine.
- Add
eclipseurl.jar to the classpath text field. Make sure you include the entire path to
the JAR file (for example, C:\WSADHelp\eclipseurl.jar).
- Click Apply to apply the changes.
- Restart the server in the Services menu in Windows.
Starting the Administrative Console
- In the Enterprise Application menu, select WSADInfocenter_war.
- If the application has not started, click Start.
- Regenerate your plug-in so that your HTTP server knows about the new Web application that you installed:
Copying all of your .doc and .doc_ plugins
From Application Developer, go to the directory that you specified as ECLIPSE_HOME. In this example, it is C:\WSADHelp.
For your convenience, two files are provided containing the names of the plug-ins that you need to copy. Use these files in a batch file with the
xcopy command to copy all of the plug-ins to your C:\WSADHelp directory.
eclipse_plugins.txt includes the
plug-ins from the X:\installdir\eclipse\plugins\wstools_plugins.txt includes the
plug-ins from the X:\installdir\wstools\eclipse\plugins
If you installed the Rational Clear Case tools when you installed Application Developer, you will also need to copy this plug-in:
X:\installdir\rational\eclipse\plugins\com.rational.clearcase.help_2.1.0.
Accessing the help system
To access the help system, open your browser to http://websphere_server/ContextRoot/help.jsp.
For more information on running the help system as a Web project, go to
eclipse.org and select the Download area.
Conclusion
The WebSphere Studio help system is an excellent resource for finding information but is not always convenient to run inside the product.
By making the help system available as a Java application, or as a Web application on an internal Web site, your team can access the help from a central location and avoid waiting for the help system to create an index each time you search it within a new workspace.
Download | Name | Size | Download method |
|---|
| infocenter.zip | 1.3 MB | FTP |HTTP |
About the author | 
| | Angel Vera graduated from Bond University in Australia and joined IBM Canada in 2000. Since then he has worked in IBM Support for Visual Age for Java and WebSphere Studio. He is also an expert on Eclipse. You can contact Angel at arvera@ca.ibm.com |
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