CasselWeb2 Installation Guide

Table of Contents

Getting CasselWeb2

  • Binary Edition: The latest stable version of CasselWeb2, version 1.5, in either zip or tar.gz formats, is available from the download page.
  • Source Edition: If you prefer the source edition, you can download the source, in either zip or tar.gz formats, for the latest CasselWeb2 release from the download page. See Building CasselWeb2 section in the Developer Guide on how to build CasselWeb2 from the source code.

System Requirements

  • OS: CasselWeb2 has been used successfully on many platforms, including Linux, Windows 2000, XP and Windows 2000 and 2003 server, and Solaris.
  • JDK: To build and use the current version of CasselWeb2, you will also need a JDK installed on your system, version 1.4.2 or later. 
    Microsoft JVM/JDK is NOT supported.
  • MySQL: Although CasselWeb2 doesn't use any RDBMS vendor specific features, it has only been tested with MySQL. The latest stable version of MySQL is available from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/index.html. It is recommended to use MySQL 5.0.x or higher for CasselWeb2.
  • Servlet/JSP Container: To use CasselWeb2, a servlet/JSP (2.4/2.0 ) container will need to be installed on the system where CasselWeb2 binary will be deployed. Tomcat (4.1 or higher), from Apache Software foundation, is recommended.

Installing CasselWeb2 Binary

Binary Content and its Structure

  • css //directory for cascade style sheets
  • jsp //directory for Java Server Pages
  • WEB-INF //web applicaton configuration files, dependent libraries, message resources, tag libraries and jMarkets classes.
  • lib //dependent libraries
  • classes //CasselWeb2 classes, logging configuration file and message resources
  • sql //CasselWeb2 database schema
  • META-INF //Meta information about the archive.

Preparation

  • Setting up Tomcat: Installation guide for tomcat is available from Tomcat Homepage under the documentation link on the left navigation panel.
  • Setting up MySQL: How to set up MySQL on a linux machine is beyond the scope of this document, please refer to the MySQL manual if you have any questions. Assuming MySQL is installed and is up and running, the following steps describe how to set up database for CasselWeb2.
  • Create CasselWeb2 database. There are many ways of creating a database, one option is to do it from the MySQL shell.

create database cassel;

  • Create CasselWeb2 database user. There are a several ways of setting up user privileges, again the following example demonstrates how to do it from the MySQL shell.

mysql>grant all privileges on cassel.* to cassel@localhost identified by 'cassel';

mysql>flush privileges;

  • Load CasselWeb2 database schema. Here we will demonstrate how to load the schema from MySQL shell. Change to the sql directory first.

mysql>use cassel; //switch to cassel database

mysql>source casselWeb.sql; // load the schema

mysql>source init.sql; // load the default administrator and experimenter

Deploying CasselWeb2

  • Renaming the web application. Decompress the CasselWeb2 binary archive in the webapps directory under your Tomcat installation. You may wish to rename the root directory name to fit your organization better as that name becomes a part of the root URL for your deployment.

  • Database configuration. And you would also modify the following files: WEB-INF/struts-config.xml to ddjust the datasource definition element to reflect the user/password you created earlier.
  • Logging. WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties Modify the file appender path according to your local settings.
  • Email configuration. Configure Email Settings Configure the email settings in /WEB-INF/email.properties. Override the testmode to false, to enable actual email communication.
  • Customize the email templates. Configure Email Templates Email templates used for generating automatic email confirmations can be found in WEB-INF/classes/resources/emailTemplates directory. Make sure you don't change the file name.

  • Customize application resource bundle. Customize Application Messages All application messages are stored in the WEB-INF/classes/resources/ApplicationResources.properties file. Make sure you don't change the property names in the file.
  • Customize External Layout. Basic Layout Page The basic layout template for all JSPs can be found in jsp/layout. Configure Page Tiles All JSPs are constructed with component tiles which are specified in WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml.

Running CasselWeb2

  • Start Tomcat, CasselWeb2 can be accessed from http://localhost:8080/$APP_NAME, where $APP_NAME is the name of the directory you choose for CasselWeb2 in the webapps directory under Tomcat.

Post deployment set up

  • Log in AdminHome to create a new subject pool.
  • Go to ExperimenterHome to create a new experiment type. 
Congratulations! You have just successfully set up CasselWeb2!