Installation and Deployment

Requirements

The DirX Corporate Directory application is built on the Angular technology. It is a JavaScript client that consumes the DirX Directory REST API service. The application must be deployed in a web container and must have access to a DirX Directory REST server.

Supported Internet Browsers

The DirX Corporate Directory application supports these types of internet browsers:

  • Microsoft Edge 117.0 (64-bit) or newer

  • Mozilla Firefox 115.3.1esr (64-bit) or newer

  • Google Chrome 117.0 (64-bit) or newer

Supported Web Servers

The DirX Corporate Directory application requires a customer-supplied installation of Apache Tomcat running with Java SE 11 or later:

  • Apache Tomcat 10.1 version 10.1.7 or higher

Use an installed Java SE 11 (or later) version with the latest security patches installed. It is the customer’s responsibility to download and install available Java SE security patches in a timely manner.

Although the application does not depend on a specific web server and can be deployed on a different one, we strictly recommend using Apache Tomcat 10.1, which is used for testing. Using a web server that is different from the recommended one may cause unexpected problems to occur in the application.
We strongly recommend that you run the DirX Corporate Directory application via the HTTPS
protocol. See the Tomcat documentation for details; for example,
Apache Tomcat 10.1 (10.1.15) - SSL/TLS Configuration How-To

DirX Directory

The DirX Corporate Directory application is a consumer of the DirX Directory REST API and therefore requires installation of:

  • DirX Directory 9.0

Installation / De-Installation

Installation

To deploy the application into Apache Tomcat, decompress the entire content of the file installation_media/Installation/os_platform/DirXDirectory/DirXCorporateDirectory/dirx-corporate-directory-1.0.build_number.zip|.tar.gz (.tar.gz when os_platform is Linux) into the directory tomcat_home/webapps.

The application’s root folder is then tomcat_home/webapps/spa.

The application is accessible through an internet browser on the URL: tomcat_URL/spa/

The default context path of the application is /spa and equals the name of the root folder of the application’s installation.
If an application is already deployed with this context path in the Tomcat server, or you want to deploy the application with a different context path, you can rename the root folder of the decompressed content (spa). In this case, the application is then accessible through an internet browser on the URL: tomcat_URL/renamed_folder/

To avoid an 'HTTP Status 404 – Not Found' error in the application when using the refresh button, configure the rewrite valve in the Apache Tomcat installation.

Edit the file tomcat_home/conf/context.xml and add this line into the Context xml tag:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.rewrite.RewriteValve" />

The rewrite valve implements the URL rewrite functionality in a way that is very similar to mod_rewrite from the Apache HTTP Server.

De-Installation

To uninstall the software, remove the directory tomcat_home/webapps/spa.

RewriteValve

If RewriteValve was configured during the installation, edit the file tomcat_home/conf/context.xml and remove this line in the Context xml tag:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.rewrite.RewriteValve"/>

Upgrade

Each patch version is released as a complete installation bundle. For the DirX Corporate Directory application, all patches are cumulative: each patch contains all the changes made by previous patches. This means you don’t need to download any other patches to achieve the latest state of the application.

To upgrade your current version, please follow these steps:

  1. Back up the application root folder.
    This folder may differ depending on your installation process. For the default installation, it is tomcat_home/webapps/spa.
    If you deployed the application in a different application context path by renaming the spa folder, please back up the renamed folder.

  2. Uninstall the current version. See the “De-Installation” part in the “Installation / De-installation” section in this document.

  3. Install the new patch version. See the “Installation” part in the “Installation / De-installation” section in this document.

  4. Update the configuration in the new installed version. See the “Configuration“ section in this document.

Configuration

The application’s default configuration must be updated for it to function properly. At a minimum, the path attribute in the rest configuration object and the baseObject attribute in the searchParameters configuration object must be provided. Check the Attributes configuration and attribute references whether they met your directory configuration. For details, see the Configuration chapter.

After each configuration update, clear the browser’s cache to get the application’s current configuration.