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Making the Celtic Demo XAP Site

This tutorial will take you through the simple steps required to get the Celtic XAP demo site up and running on your computer. No XAP license is required to run this demo.

The Celtic XAP demo is a fully functioning web site for a fictitious business that sells Celtic jewelry. The site includes complete descriptions and photos of the inventory items and a shopping cart mechanism for processing online purchases, including credit card processing.

The real value of this demo is running an IB program that uses .csv files to describe the inventory items and site properties generates the site. By changing only the content of the .csv files, some .html code, and the photos of the inventory items, you can generate a similar site for just about any business who wants to sell its items over the internet!

Here are the steps to making the demo:

Once you see how easy this is, you'll want to read the next tutorial that will take you through the steps to turning the Celtic site into a site for your business.

Install the CelticXAP zip file

Create a new folder called "Celtic" under your "Comet" folder. Unzipping the file will create additional sub-folders under the "Celtic" folder. Be sure to select your unzip app's option to use the folder names so they are created properly.

Unzip CelticXAP.zip into the new "Celtic" folder. At the end of this process you should have the following folders:

  • ..\Comet\Celtic
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\CEL
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\DAT
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\dbimages
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\dbthumbs
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\images
  • ..\Comet\Celtic\XAP

Configure your system for local XAP

Open your Comet.ini file and add or verify that your configuration has the following:
  • a type "8" gateway: Gateway = 8,0; Free localhost XAP (127.0.0.1 only)
  • a COS directory
  • the ..\Comet\Celtic\CEL directory
  • the ..\Comet\Celtic\DAT directory
  • the ..\Comet\Celtic\XAP directory as one of the 1st 50 directories
  • at least one background partition which will be available for running the XAP programs
We recommend setting up a user configuration with the Celtic directories accessed ahead of your existing directories to eliminate conflicts with any files you may already have using the same names. Once you've finished making the Comet.ini changes, run SYSGEN and restart Comet.

Customize the site.csv file

In the CEL folder you'll find a file called site.csv. Open it in a text editor. Find the line near the to of the file that says E Address,,,,jim@signature.net. Change "jim@signature.net" to your email address.

Find the line that says E Name,,,,jim@signature.net. Change "jim@signature.net" to your name.

This file also contains a description of all the inventory items for the site. Please do not modify any lines other than the ones listed above.

Customize the local.csv file

In the CEL folder you'll find a file called local.csv. Open it in a text editor. Find the line that says Smtp,,,,smtp-server.hawaii.rr.com. Change "smtp-server.hawaii.rr.com" to the name of your smtp server. If your smtp server requires authentication, you'll need to add the user name and password information here also. Here's the syntax:
euser,,,,username
epwd,,,,password
The Celtic site automatically sends email notifications when orders are processed. If you don't have an smtp server available from this computer, you can leave these settings alone. You just won't get the email function.

Find the line that says Path,,,,c:\Comet\Celtic\cel\. Change "c:\Comet\Celtic\cel\" so that it contains the correct path to the CEL folder on your computer.

Find the line that says Printer,,,,let. Change "let" so that it contains the name of a text email printer on your computer.

Customize the #XAP file

In the XAP folder you'll find a file called #XAP. Open it in a text editor. Find the line that says LOGFILE c:\comet\celtic\xap\xaplog.txt. Change "c:\comet\celtic\xap\xaplog.txt" so that it contains the correct path to the XAP folder on your computer.

Run the MAKE program

MAKE is an IB program that will generate all the Comet data files and XAP programs required to run the Celtic site. It is driven by the site.csv file and a .csv file that describes the domain, or computer hosting the site. For this demo, it will use local.csv.

Run MAKE from the READY prompt. When asked for the name of the domain file, enter local. Enter "Y" to "Initialize ALL Files?". As it runs, progress messages will be displayed. The entire process should take about 10 seconds, depending on the speed of your computer. When it has finished, the last progress message displayed will say "Done". Press ENTER to exit the program.

Now we'll verify that MAKE did its job. Open Comet Explorer and select the DAT directory. You should see that this folder now contains 13 keyed files and one text file. Open MAKELOG.TXT and check to be sure there are no error messages.

Switch to the XAP directory. This folder should now contain 14 IB object programs and the style.css text file.

If you see anything other than what's described here, the installation has failed and you'll need to correct whatever is wrong before continuing.

Start XAPMON

Your site is ready for testing! Run XAPMON from READY. If it starts successfully, you'll see "Monitor running . . .". If not, recheck your Comet.ini and #XAP files to be sure they're setup properly. This demo is configured to use port 8080 for its communication with the web browser. If for some reason this port is not available on your computer, set the correct port in the #XAP and local.csv files.

See your new site

Open up your web browser and send it to http://localhost:8080/xap/, where 8080 is the port being used. The Celtic Journey home page should display!
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