Tutorial

Author:

Stefan Eletzhofer

Date:

Feb 27, 2024

Abstract

In this short tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of:

• creating a nexiles|elements app

• packing and uploading a nexiles|elements app

• launching the app.

We’ll create a simple app called tutorial.

Note

Need to explain the nxtools configuration.

Prerequisites

All new apps are derived from a template app.

Template App

An example app which can be used as a template app ships with this package and can be found in the apps folder.

This template app needs to live in Windchill and can be located by a specific name which can be configured in the configuration file.

The name of the template can be set in the global configuration file.

Configuration

The configuration file lives in $HOME/.nxtools/default.ini or in %windir%.nxtoolsdefault.ini on Windows hosts.

The configuration defaults to:

[nxtools]
verbose=true

; to enable logging to a file set this to a path
; logfile=nxtools.log

; logging level
loglevel = debug

; to enter the post-mortem debugger on exceptions
; set this to true
post-mortem = false

[apps]
; the name of the app template for the 'app-create' command
app-template=template

Important

Although the name of the template app defaults to template, the name of the WTDocument has to be nexiles.template.app. The pre- and postfix are convention and get automatically set when a new app is uploaded.

To specify a container and folder for all apps, you should define something like this in your configuration:

[apps]
; the name of the app template for the 'app-create' command
app-template-name=template
app-container-name=TestProduct
app-folder-path=/Default/apps

Uploading the Template app

To get started with app development, you should provide an template app:

nxtools app-pack --source-dir apps/template/static --name template
nxtools app-upload --source-dir apps/template/static --name template

Creating A nexiles|elements app

Steps to perform:

• create a initial app structure

• create a initial app package

• upload the package

• test the app.

Create initial app structure

To speed up the app creation process, we supply a template suitable for bootstrapping the app development process. The template app is stored on the Windchill server. To use it and create a initial structure for our tutorial app, do:

$ mkdir tutorial
$ cd tutorial
$ nxtools app-create --name tutorial

This command will fetch the template package from the server and unpack it to a new directory static.

The static directory contains a special file app-meta.json, which contains meta data definitions for the app, such as the app name and description. This file looks something like this:

{
    "version":      "0.1dev"
    "thumbnail":    "images/gruenerpunkt.png",
    "app-url":      "index.html",
    "name":         "nexiles|elements template",
    "description":  "nexiles|elements app template"
}

Please refer to the nexiles|gateway App Specification for a detailed explanation of the keys of this file. For now, just edit the name and description fields.

Create a intial app package

Prior to uploading a new or updated app, we need to pack the application to a app package. To pack the app, issue:

$ cd tutorial
$ nxtools app-pack --name tutorial

The app package should now be in static/build/tutorial-app.zip.

Upload the app

Now that we have a app package, we are able to upload it.:

$ cd tutorial
$ nxtools app-upload --name tutorial

Test the app

To open a local browser, do:

$ nxtools app-open tutorial

Your configured web browser will open and you should see the template app content, but served from the tutorial package. In effect, we created a copy of the template app.