Histvv Server

The histvv server is an Express based web application serving data and documentation for the HistVV Project.

Synopsis

npm install -g github:ubleipzig/histvv
histvv-server

Prerequisites

BaseX

The histvv server uses the REST API of a BaseX XML database to access and query a collection of XML files conforming to the Histvv Schema. BaseX is expected to be run in client/server mode:

basexhttp -S

The histvv server has been tested with BaseX version 9.4.2.

Node.js

As an Express application, the histvv server requires Node.js to run. It has been tested with Node version 12.18.0.

Options

The histvv-server command accepts the following command line options:

• --port the port the histvv server listens on (default: 3000)
• --db the name of basex database to use (default: histvv)
• --dbhost the basex server host (default: localhost)
• --dbport the basex server port (default: 8984)
• --user username of the basex user (default: admin)
• --password password of the basex user (default: admin)
• --static a directory of files to be served by the histvv server in addition to database resources (default: none, see https://github.com/ubleipzig/histvv-data/blob/master/public as an example)
• --xsl a custom XSL stylesheet to post-process the HTML produced by the histvv server (default: none, see https://github.com/ubleipzig/histvv-data/blob/master/custom.xsl as an example)

Example

To serve the data of the Histvv project at Leipzig University run the following commands:

# clone the data repository
git clone https://github.com/ubleipzig/histvv-data.git
# start the database server
basexserver -S
# create and populate the database
# (make sure to use the -w option to preserve white space in the documents)
basex -w -c 'create db histvv ./histvv-data/xml'
# install the histvv server globally
npm install -g github:ubleipzig/histvv
# start the server passing in static data and a custom stylesheet
histvv-server --static ./histvv-data/public --xsl ./histvv-data/custom.xsl

Now the server can be accessed under http://localhost:3000/. It can be stopped with the Ctrl-C key combination.

Docker

The Dockerfile in this repo allows to build and run a docker container like this:

docker build  -t histvv/server .
docker run -ti -p 3000:3000 -e dbhost=10.1.2.3 histvv/server

This would run a containerized histvv-server connecting to a BaseX database hosted at 10.1.2.3 (with the default port 8984 and database name histvv). It would be available at http://localhost:3000/.

The exposed port of the histvv-server and the database it connects to can be overridden from the command line:

docker run -ti \
  -p 3003:3000 \
  -e dbhost=10.1.2.3 \
  -e dbport=8999 \
  -e dbname=histvv_leipzig \
  histvv/server

Development

With npm start you can run an instance of the histvv server that reloads whenever you change the code:

git clone https://github.com/ubleipzig/histvv.git
cd histvv
npm start

You can pass options to the dev server like this:

npm start -- --port 3003 --db histvv_dev

To enable debug output run

DEBUG=histvv:* npm start

Author

Carsten Milling cmil@hashtable.de

License

Copyright (C) 2018-2020 Leipzig University Library info@ub.uni-leipzig.de

Histvv is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Histvv is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.