New step to opening sites with FP alpha 0.5.x

Early last week the OP3FT posted version 0.5.1 of  the Frogans Player for Developers alpha, and then posted version 0.5.2 at the end of the week.

The big news with the latest versions is that you can now post and open a Frogans site on any HTTP server.

  • This means that share your site creations online.
  • This also means that you can create and test dynamic sites using server-side scripting languages, like PHP, JSP and the like.

But, with this new capability, and in the absence, for now, of Frogans Address resolution, there is an added step to testing your site with the Frogans Player for Developers alpha. The application now includes a file, called “configuration-for-testing.xml.”

In a nutshell, you use this file to tell Frogans Player where to find your sites. It is already configured for opening “test*helloworld,” and you can add content to it to configure it to open up to 15 other sites by defining new <test-frogans-site> elements.

Here’s how the default <test-frogans-site> element is defined for opening “test*hellowold” locally on your computer (pay particular attention to the stuff in bold):

<test-frogans-site address="test*helloworld">
<frogans-site-root-directory> <ucsr-path network="LOCAL"> <platform>macosx</platform> <folder>./test/helloworld</folder> </ucsr-path> </frogans-site-root-directory>
<fsdl-documents> <version>3.0</version> <encoding>UTF-8</encoding> </fsdl-documents>
<home-slide-file>/home.fsdl</home-slide-file>
</test-frogans-site>

Let’s take a look at the stuff in bold:

  • “test*helloworld” – This value of the “address” tag is the “address” by which Frogans Player will open your site. Whereas before, the “address” was the name of the “test” folder, plus “*” plus the name of the subfolder for your site, you now write the full address here. Note that the Site-Name portion of your address must still always be “test.”
  • “./test/helloworld” – this is the local placement of the folder containing your Frogans site resources, relative to the placement of Frogans Player. Note that the name of the folder and the Site-Name in the address don’t necessarily have to be the same.  (Note also the “./” at the beginning of the string, and the absence of a “/” at the end.)
  • “home.fsdl” – Until now, your home slide always had to be named “home.fsdl”. Now it can have any name (as long as it complies with the “name” attribute value for the <file> element in the FSDL 3.0 Specification).

For every Frogans site that you want to open, you’ll have to define a <test-frogans-site> element in your “configuration-for-testing.xml” file. For sites stored locally on your computer, all you have to do is copy the element for “test*helloworld” (with all of its children included) and make sure that the stuff shown in bold up above is relevant for each site.

For Frogans sites that you store on an HTTP server, your <test-frogans-site> is defined differently. Specifically, whereas your <frogans-site-root-directory> child element looked like this…

<frogans-site-root-directory>
   <ucsr-path network="LOCAL">
      <platform>macosx</platform>
      <folder>./test/helloworld</folder>
   </ucsr-path>
</frogans-site-root-directory>

…it now looks like this…

<frogans-site-root-directory>                  
   <ucsr-path network="IP-DNS-TCP-HTTP">
      <location>public</location>
      <domain-name>frogans-lab.com</domain-name>
      <port>80</port>
      <directory>/frogal/lechariot</directory>
   </ucsr-path>
</frogans-site-root-directory>

…where

  • you write the fully qualified domain name where your site is hosted in the place of  “frogans-lab.com”. Be sure not to put “http://” in front of it or to put a “/” after it;
  • you write the directory path to your root directory in the place of “/frogal/lechariot”. Be sure not to put a “/” at the end.

In other words, the <frogans-site-root-directory> element points Frogans Player to a Frogans site that is hosted at “http://frogans-lab.com/frogal/lechariot”.

No use trying this in your Web browser.

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