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About uPortal-start

uPortal-start is the mechanism through which individuals and institutions adopt Apereo uPortal, the leading open source enterprise portal framework built by and for higher education institutions, K-12 schools, and research communities. uPortal-start is new for uPortal 5.0

uPortal-start help you manage:

  • Your uPortal configuration
  • Your uPortal skin
  • Your uPortal data
  • And your uPortal deployments through an integrated suite of CLI tools

Prerequisites

The following software packages are required for working with uPortal-start:

Download and install the latest JDK 8 release. Make sure you select the full JDK; a JRE is not sufficient!

⚠️ Always use Git to obtain a copy of uPortal-start. (Please ignore the Download ZIP option provided by GitHub.) The uPortal Developer Community makes improvements to uPortal-start every week: new features, bug fixes, performance enhancements, additions to documentation, &c. It is extremely important to be able to update your local copy of uPortal-start and (thereby) benefit from these contributions.

uPortal 5.0 Manual

This README provides some high-level information on the uPortal-start component, plus some how-to examples of performing many of the most common tasks. The complete uPortal 5.0 Manual is hosted in GitHUb Pages.

As far as possible, the examples in this README are presented in the order in which you will want to perform them when you set up a local uPortal dev environment.

Using uPortal-start

uPortal-start provides a build system and several CLI tools through Gradle, and it even comes with a Gradle Wrapper so you don't have to install Gradle to use it.

Invoking the Gradle Wrapper on *nix:

    $ ./gradlew {taskname} [{taskname}...]

Invoking the Gradle Wrapper on Windows:

    > gradlew.bat {taskname} [{taskname}...]

NOTE: For the sake of brevity, the remaining examples in this document are *nix-only.

You can view a comprehensive list of Gradle tasks -- with short descriptions of what they do -- by running the following command:

    $ ./gradlew tasks

List of Examples:

How To Set Up Everything the First Time

The remaining examples (below) illustrate how to perform the most common uPortal tasks individually; but there's an easy way to do all of them at once when you're just starting out.

Use the following command to set up your portal the first time:

    $ ./gradlew portalInit

This command performs the following steps:

  • Starts the integrated HSQLDB instance (hsqlStart)
  • Downloads, installs, and configures the integrated Tomcat servlet container (tomcatInstall)
  • Deploys all uPortal web applications to Tomcat (tomcatDeploy)
  • Creates the database schema, and imports both the Base & Implementation data sets (dataInit)

⚠️ After this command, your HSQLDB instance will be running. That's normally a good thing, but don't forget to stop it if you need to.

📓 Your Tomcat server, on the other hand, will not be running when this command finishes. Don't forget to follow these instructions to start it.

📓 You can run this command again later if you want to "reset" your environment to a clean state. It's a good idea to make sure both the Tomcat container and the HSQLDB instance are not running when you do.

How To Install Tomcat

uPortal-start comes pre-integrated with the Apache Tomcat Servlet Container, which is a requirement for running uPortal. Several Tomcat configuration steps must be performed, moreover, before the uPortal application software will function properly within it. uPortal-start handles these configuration tasks for you.

You can download (from Maven Central), install, and properly configure an appropriate Tomcat container by running the following command:

    $ ./gradlew tomcatInstall

You can run this command again at any time to reset your Tomcat container to the defaults defined by uPortal-start.

How To Start the Embedded Database

uPortal-start also comes pre-integrated with a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) called HSQLDB. A supported RDBMS instance is another uPortal requirement. For uPortal server deployments, you will want to choose a different RDBMS platform: most likely Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, or PostgreSQL. The integrated HSQLDB instance, however, is recommended for local dev environments of uPortal.

Use the following command to start the embedded HSQLDB instance:

    $ ./gradlew hsqlStart

📓 the database must be running at all times when uPortal is running, and it also must be running whenever several of the Import/Export tools are invoked. (See examples below.) It is customary to leave HSQLDB running all day, or as long as you're actively working on uPortal.

You can stop the HSQLDB instance with the following command:

    $ ./gradlew hsqlStop

You can launch the HSQL DB Manager application with the following command:

    $ ./gradlew hsqlOpen

How To Deploy uPortal Technology to Tomcat

When(ever) you perform the tomcatInstall task, the Tomcat container will be empty. You need to build your uPortal application software and deploy it to Tomcat before you will be able to see it working.

You can do that with the following command:

    $ ./gradlew tomcatDeploy

📓 you will need to run this command again any time you make changes to anything inside the overlays folder.

You can also run this command for one project at a time, for example...

    $ ./gradlew :overlays:Announcements:tomcatDeploy

This is a great way to save time when you're working on a specific subproject.

How To Create and Initialize the Database Schema

uPortal-start provides several Command Line Interface (CLI) tools that allow you to manage the portal database. The most important of these is the dataInit task.

Use the following command to create the database schema and fill it with base portal data as well as your implementation data set:

    $ ./gradlew dataInit

⚠️ This command also drops the existing database schema (beforehand) if necessary. You probably want to perform this task against the production portal database exactly one time (in the beginning). In the case of non-production deployments, however, using dataInit for a full "database reset" is fairly common.

How To Start Tomcat

Once you have deployed uPortal technology, you will need to start the Tomcat server before you can see your portal working. You can do that with the following command:

    $ ./gradlew tomcatStart

⚠️ It is safest to run Gradle tasks in uPortal-start only when Tomcat is not running. This provision applies to tasks that build and deploy uPortal technology, as well as tasks that manipulate the portal database.

You can stop the Tomcat server using with this command:

    $ ./gradlew tomcatStop

First Time Running uPortal via uPortal-start

Assuming all the defaults were left untouched:

How To Create a Custom Skin

uPortal-start provides a Gradle task that can get you started on the right foot when you're ready to create a custom skin. Use this command to generate a new skin for uPortal Respondr:

    $ ./gradlew skinGenerate -DskinName={name}

You must specify a name for your skin. A valid skin name contains between 3 and 20 alphanumeric characters.

Your skin files will be placed inside overlays/uPortal/src/main/webapp/media/skins/respondr. You can adjust many common settings in variables.less; use skin.less to define CSS rules (in LESS syntax) that override the default uPortal/Respondr CSS.

How To Configure Your Deployment

uPortal contains many configuration settings. (Please refer to the uPortal 5.0 Manual for a comprehensive guide to configuration.) All settings have default values, which -- for the most part -- have been selected to suit the needs of a local development environment (like the one this README guides you through creating).

You can override the value of most configuration settings using one or both of the following local configuration files:

  • uPortal.properties
  • global.properties

Both files are optional. uPortal.properties is for uPortal-only settings, whereas global.properties is for settings that may also be read and used by uPortal Modules (such as portlets). Both files support all the same settings. If the same setting is defined in both files, the value in uPortal.properties "wins."

Both files (if you're using them) must be placed in the portal.home directory. The default location of portal.home is '${catalina.base}/portal', but you can specify your own location by defining a PORTAL_HOME environment variable.

A sample uPortal.properties file -- with several commonly-adjusted settings defined and documented -- is available in the etc/portal directory of this project. Feel free to customize that sample with institution-specific defaults in your fork of uPortal-start.

How To Customize Text

Most of the text strings displayed in the portal are in the uPortal project, defined in Messages.properties in the directory uPortal-webapp/src/main/resources/properties/i18n.

You can override this file by copying the entire file to the uPortal-start project and putting it in a directory named i18n under overlays/uPortal/src/main/resources/properties. The full filepath should be overlays/uPortal/src/main/resources/properties/i18n/Messages.properties.

You can make changes to text and rebuild the uPortal-start project without having to modify the uPortal project.

Creating a Docker Image

⚠️ Support for Docker in uPortal-start requires Docker version 17.05 or above.

uPortal-start provides baked-in support for building Docker images through its CLI. It knows how to create three different images (for three different purposes):

  • apereo/uportal is the basic, web server-only image
  • apereo/uportal-cli is the image for running CLI commands from within a container (e.g. Import/Export)
  • apereo/uportal-quickstart is an image that includes the embedded HSQL database and is suitable for evaluating uPortal

Use one of the following Gradle tasks to build the image(s) you need:

./gradlew dockerBuildImageWeb         // builds apereo/uportal
./gradlew dockerBuildImageCli         // builds apereo/uportal-cli
./gradlew dockerBuildImageQuickstart  // builds apereo/uportal-quickstart
./gradlew dockerBuildImages           // builds all three images

⚠️ Always make sure both tomcatInstall and tomcatDeploy have run and their output is intact before invoking any of the dockerBuildImage<type> tasks.