Installing Fiz
Before you start
First, set up your machine so that it can run Fiz. You will need to install the following packages:
- Java 5 or later
- Apache ant 1.6 or later (http://ant.apache.org/)
- Apache Tomcat 6 (http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi)
Download Fiz
Download the latest version of the Fiz installer from http://fiz.stanford.edu/fizCore/home. Once you have that, unzip it to some location on your file system. The rest of this page assumes that the unzipped install directory is called fiz-x
. You will need to retain the install directory for later use by the fiz
command-line tool.
The Fiz command-line tool
The Fiz distribution includes a command-line program named fiz
. This program provides facilities that make it easy for you to manage your Fiz application(s), such as:
- Create a new Fiz application using a standard directory hierarchy and collection of ant targets.
- Import a Fiz extension into an application.
- Create a new Fiz extension.
- Upgrade to a newer release of Fiz or an extension.
Before you can use fiz
you must open a shell window, cd to the install directory (fiz-x
), and type the following shell command:
ant install
This will create the fiz
application in the directory fiz-x/bin
. On Windows there will be two versions of fiz
: fiz.bat
, which is a native Windows script, and fiz
, which is a shell script that will run under Cygwin and other UNIX emulation environments. You will then need to add fiz-x/bin
to your PATH variable.
To learn how to use fiz
, type
fiz help
or click here for more information.
Running the demo application
The Fiz distribution includes a demonstration application with a few simple pages that illustrate the basic features of Fiz. To try out this application:
- Open a shell window, cd into
fiz-x
and invoke the following ant target:This will compile the demonstration application and create a directoryant build-demo
fiz-x/out/demo
that contains an image ready for installation in Tomcat. - Find the
ROOT
application directory in your Tomcat installation (if Tomcat is installed in directoryxyz
it should be in thexyz/webapps/ROOT
). Replace the contents of theROOT
application directory with the contents offiz-x/out/demo
. - Start your Tomcat server; if it is already running, you may need to restart it in order for it to see the application directory changes.
- You should now be able to try out the demo application. If your Tomcat server is running on the port 8080 (the default) you can click on the following links:
- A collection of tables: http://localhost:8080/demo/tableSection
- A few simple forms: http://localhost:8080/demo/formSection
- A tabbed header: http://localhost:8080/demo/tabSection
- An expandable tree: http://localhost:8080/demo/tree
- Examples of CompoundSections: http://localhost:8080/demo/compound
- Examples of RatingSections: http://localhost:8080/demo/ratingSection