The MobileFirst Development Server and the MobileFirst Operations Console

Learn about the MobileFirst Development Server, how it is viewed in the MobileFirst Operations Console, and how to access it for Java™ remote debugging.

In IBM® Worklight V6.0.0, the Jetty server was replaced with an embedded instance of WebSphere® Application Server Liberty profile. This Liberty profile server is installed with MobileFirst Studio, and becomes the default test server.

As a result, you see a MobileFirst Development Server element in your Eclipse Project Explorer view, even before you begin creating new projects and working with them.

New MobileFirst Development Server element

Viewing the MobileFirst Development Server in the MobileFirst Operations Console

A menu item in MobileFirst Studio allows you to open this console even more easily. You can automatically redeploy applications in Eclipse studio if you click Project > Open MobileFirst Operations Console.. If a development server does not have any applications that are deployed, the server deploys all applications under the project. Any updated applications that require redeployment will automatically be deployed again by using this command.

You can work with additional instances of MobileFirst Server other than the embedded MobileFirst Development Server. For example, if you have an additional instance of WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile or Apache Tomcat that is installed in your development environment, you can change the context root to the correct server when building, deploying, or viewing its actions in the console. To do this, you use the Changing the MobileFirst Server associated with a project procedure described in Working with multiple MobileFirst Server instances in MobileFirst Studio.

Note: The MobileFirst Development Server is secured with the credentials of a user named admin and the password admin. The user name and password cannot be changed in the MobileFirst Development Server. When you open the MobileFirst Operations Console through MobileFirst Studio, it is not necessary to enter the user name and password. If you keep the window of the MobileFirst Operations Console open a very long time, you might receive a request to reconfirm the password.

Creating a URL to access the MobileFirst Operations Console directly

In previous releases of MobileFirst Studio, the URL of the MobileFirst Operations Console used to view the development test server in a browser had the following format:

http://localhost:<port>/console

Starting from IBM Worklight Foundation V6.2.0, in MobileFirst Studio, the URL of the MobileFirst Operations Console has the following format:

http://localhost:<port>/worklightconsole

The default <port> after the installation of MobileFirst Studio is 10080. Therefore, the URL of the MobileFirst Operations Console becomes:

http://localhost:10080/worklightconsole

The MobileFirst Operations Console can be used to manage several projects. If only one project is deployed, this project is included directly in the URL of the console. If several projects are deployed, you can select a project from a page. Starting from IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation V7.0.0, the format of the URL of a project selected in this way is:

http://localhost:<port>/worklightconsole/index.html#/main/<projectname>

The URL of the MobileFirst Operations Console for a project named "myProject" becomes:

http://localhost:10080/worklightconsole/index.html#/main/myProject

Note: The Open MobileFirst Operations Console menu command in MobileFirst Studio can only point to one instance of MobileFirst Server at a time. It displays the console for the server instance for which the context root was set by using the Run As > Build Settings and Deploy Target command. If you need to work with several different servers for test purposes (for example, one instance of Liberty profile and another of Apache Tomcat), you should save the URLs for the MobileFirst Operations Console of these servers as bookmarks in your default browser.

Java remote debug and the MobileFirst Development Server

Since IBM Worklight V6.1.0, the Liberty profile instance used as the MobileFirst Development Server has Java remote debug enabled. The default port is 10777, and can be viewed in the Console view of MobileFirst Studio when the server is started:

MobileFirst Studio Console view, showing the default port for Java remote debug

This default port can be changed by editing the jvm.options file in MobileFirst Development Server/servers/worklight:

The screen shot shows the default debug port for the MobileFirst Development Server being edited.