Installing the help system as an infocenter

You can allow your users to access the help system over the Internet or an intranet, by installing the infocenter and the documentation plug-ins on a server. Clients view help by navigating to a URL, and the help system is shown in their web browser. The infocenter help system can be used both for client applications and for web applications, either of which can have their help accessed remotely. All features of help system except infopops and active help are supported.

The infocenter help system allows passing number of options that can be used to customize various aspects of the infocenter. The following options are supported:

Installation/packaging

These steps are for the help system integrator and are not meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is assumed that all your documentation is delivered as Eclipse plug-ins and, in general, you are familiar with the eclipse help system.

  1. Download the Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary driver from www.eclipse.org.
  2. Install (unzip) the driver in a directory, d:\myApp. This will create an eclipse sub-directory, d:\myApp\eclipse that contains the code required for the Eclipse platform (which includes the help system).

How to start or stop infocenter from command line

The org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter class has a main method that you can use to launch infocenter from a command line. The command line arguments syntax is:

-command start | shutdown | [-eclipsehome eclipseInstallPath] [-host helpServerHost] [-port helpServerPort] [-servertimeout timeout] [-noexec] [platform options] [-vmargs JavaVMarguments]

To start an infocenter on port 8081 issue a start command by running

java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.1.0\help.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -command start -eclipsehome d:\myApp\eclipse -port 8081

To shut the infocenter down issue a shutdown command by running

java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.1.0\help.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -command shutdown -eclipsehome d:\myApp\eclipse

Using the infocenter

Start the web server. Point a web browser to the path "help" web application running on a port specified when starting the infocenter.  On the machine the infocenter is installed, this would be http://localhost:8081/help/.

How to start or stop infocenter from Java

When including infocenter as part of another application, it may be more convenient to start it and stop using Java APIs instead of using system commands. Follow the steps if it is the case:

  1. Make sure d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.1.0\help.jar is on your app classpath. The class you use to start, and shut down the infocenter isorg.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter.
  2. Create an array of String containing options that you want to pass to the infocenter. Typically, the eclipsehome and port options are needed.
    String[] options = new String[] { "-eclipsehome", "d:\\myApp\\eclipse" , "-port", "8081" }; 
  3. In your application, create an instance of the Help class by passing the options.
    Infocenter infocenter = new Help(options); 
  4. To start the help system:
    helpSystem.start();
  5. To shut the infocenter down:

    helpSystem.shutdown(); 

Making infocenter available on the web

Eclipse contains a complete infocenter and does not require other server software to run. However, in unsecure environment like Internet, it is recommended infocenter is not accessed directly by clients, but is made available through an HTTP server or an application server. Most servers come with modules or servlets for delegating certain request to other web resources. For example, one may configure a proxy module of Apache HTTP Server to redirect requests made to http://mycompany.com/myproduct/infocenter to http://internalserver:8081/help that runs an infocenter. Adding the lines

LoadModule proxy_module modules/ApacheModuleProxy.dll
ProxyPass /myproduct http://internalserver:8081/help
ProxyPassReverse /myproduct http://internalserver:8081/help
to conf/httpd.conf file of Apache server running mycompany web site accomplishes this.

[Optional] Installing a minimal set of plug-ins

The infocenter does not require the entire  Eclipse Platform package. It is possible to run the infocenter with the following plug-ins (located in the  eclipse\plugins directory):

org.apache.lucene
org.apache.xerces
org.eclipse.core.boot
org.eclipse.core.resources
org.eclipse.core.runtime
org.eclipse.help
org.eclipse.help.appserver
org.eclipse.help.webapp
org.eclipse.tomcat
org.eclipse.update.core

In addition to these plugins, depending on the operating system or machine architecture, you may need to also need to install the corresponding fragments for the above plugins (when they exist). For example, on Windows, you need to add the following fragments (also located in the eclipse\plugins directory):

org.eclipse.core.resources.win32
org.eclipse.update.core.win32

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