Running the Standalone Designer

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Update November 2014: The ToolTwist CLI is still being fine tuned, so documentation might vary slightly from the version downloaded from npm

The standalone Designer can be run from any location, with minimal setup.

Before starting, you should have Java, Nodejs, Ruby 2.0 and ImageMagick installed on your machine.

Installing Tooltwist-cli

    sudo npm install -g tooltwist

Running the demo project

To start, go to a convenient directory (e.g. ~/Development) and initialize tooltwist. This will create a project named myProject to contain all the files related to the Designer. By default it will run the Designer to edit the ttdemo demonstration project.

    $ mkdir someDirectory
    $ cd someDirectory
    $ tooltwist init
    ...
    $ cd myProject
    $ tooltwist designer
    ...
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
          MODE: designer
    REPOSITORY: https://github.com/twistresources/pundit-webdesign.git
        BRANCH: development
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ...
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tooltwist Startup Commencing <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
      >>>>>>   ...
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tooltwist Startup Finished <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
      Started Tomcat Server
      The Server is running at http://localhost:8080/ttsvr
      (Server can be stopped with Control-C)
    
    
    
    		     THE SERVER IS NOW RUNNING.
    
    		  http://localhost:8080/ttsvr/login
    
    
    
      Default log file is /private/tmp/,9/.tooltwist/tooltwist.log

You can now open your browser at http://localhost:8080/ttsvr/login to edit your web design. The first time you enter the Designer you will need to generate images, using Misc->Generate Images.

Running the Designer on your own project

To edit your own web design project in the standalone Designer, edit tooltwist.js and replace the webdesign repo:

    exports.config = {
    	"mode" : "designer",
    	"webdesign" : {
    		"name" : "ttdemo",
    		"repo" : "git://www.github.com/tooltwist/ttdemo.git",   <---
    		"branch" : "master"
    	},
    	...
    }

Note, August 2014: The branch field is not currently used. See the workaround below.

Run the tooltwist command again, wait for the server to start and log in. Your project should be accessible by clicking on the project name.

Changing config files

The config files are all generated from templates, which may be overridden. To do so, first run this command:

    $ tooltwist example-templates

This will create a directory named tooltwist.templates containing example templates. To override a template, remove the ".example" suffix from a file and make any changes you require. The relevant config file will be updated next time you run tooltwist.

Problems in the Webdesign project

If you wish to change branch in use for the webdesign project, or the extension projects in use, you can do this from the directory tooltwist/webdesign-projects/projectName.

See Preparing a web design project to change the extension projects.

Don't forget to commit your changes and push them back to Github.

Problems with Gradle

If you encounter problems with Gradle (for example missing dependencies) you can run Gradle from the command line:

    $ cd tooltwist/gradle/ttsvr
    $ gw -i assemble

A few tips for debugging Gradle builds can be found here.

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