Installation
http://plover.sourceforge.net \| Last published: 03 April, 2005

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Using Plover

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Introduction

In this document we shall explain how to install the Plover server-side hosting environment. Henceforth in this document, unless explicitly mentioned, the name Plover is synonymous with the server-side entity hosting environment.

Since Plover is an embeded framework, it needs a base platform to install and run. Two types of platform are recognized: generic service and servlet container.

Choose your Servlet Container

In applications where Plover needs to run as part of a web-application, you need to have, at the very minimum, a servlet container that supports the Java Servlet specification version 2.0 and higher. Plover does not come pre-bundled with a servlet container or with the servlet APIs.

Plover has been tested to work properly with the Jetty webserver (http://jetty.mortbay.org). Other servlet containers that we recommend are:

Jakarta Tomcat (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat)
Caucho Resin (http://www.caucho.com)

Installation as a Generic Service

Download and extract the contents of plover-host-0.2.0.zip into a suitable folder on your local machine. Ensure that the extracted jar files are available as entries in the application classpath.

From within your application startup logic, execute the following code snippet to start the Plover hosting environment:




import omd.plover.hosting.launcher.app.PloverLauncher;



...

PloverLauncher pl = null;

try

{   pl = new PloverLauncher();

    pl.configure("/config/plover-host.xml");

    pl.start();

}

catch(Throwable th)

{   // Handle exception conditions.

}

Exceptions thrown during the process must be appropriately handled. The structure and contents of the plover-host.xml configuration file is discussed in details elsewhere. The start() method should be called only after completion of configuration, to start all Plover specific services.

When installed and launched as part of a generic service, Plover does not provide HTTP based transport. RMI based transport and network discovery service are optionally enabled depending on the contents of the Plover configuration file.

Installation in a Servlet Container

Download and extract the contents of plover-host-0.2.0.zip into the lib folder of your web application folder. This will ensure that the jar files in the binary distribution are available as entries in the web application classpath.

Make the following modifications to application assembly descriptor file (web.xml) for this web application:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>plover-host</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>omd.plover.hosting.launcher.http.PloverServlet</servlet-class>
  <load-on-startup>0</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>plover-host</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/host</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

The Plover configuration file must reside under the path WEB-INF/plover-host.xml within your web application.

When installed and launched from within a servlet container, Plover always provides HTTP based transport. RMI based transport and network discovery service are optionally enabled depending on the contents of the Plover configuration file.