Creating Static WebUI Snapshots#

Note

This page has been migrated from the old documentation, and has not yet been fully revised. There might be inconsistencies or errors when using with current LinkAhead versions.

It can be helpful to generate static snapshots of WebUI contents, e.g. for reviewing layouts or for presentation purposes. This is possible with a little bit of effort. Excitingly not only the layout can be exported, but also a lot of the javascript functionality can be maintained in the static pages.

Create the static webui folder in the docker container#

We need a static version of the LinkAhead webui. In principle, it can be simply copied from e.g. a running docker container or from the public-directory. As it contains self-referencing (cyclic) symlinks a little bit of care has to be taken.

Using Docker#

Login to the linkahead Docker container as root:

docker exec -u 0 -ti linkahead /bin/bash

We need to be root (-u 0) in order to be able to create a copy of linkahead-webui within the container. Create the copy using cp and the option for following symlinks -L:

cp -L git/linkahead-server/linkahead-webui/public/ webui-copy

It will warn you that two symlinks (which are cyclic) cannot be created. That’s fine, we will create these two symlinks later.

cp: cannot copy cyclic symbolic link 'git/linkahead-server/linkahead-webui/public/1602145811'  <- The number here is a "unique" build number
cp: cannot copy cyclic symbolic link 'git/linkahead-server/linkahead-webui/public/webinterface'

Please copy the build number somewhere, or make sure your terminal history does not get wiped.

Copy webui-copy from the docker container to the location where you want to store the snapshots: docker cp linkahead:/opt/caosdb/webui-copy/ .

Create the two missing symlinks in webui-copy/public:

ln -s webui-copy/public webui-copy/public/1602145811
ln -s webui-copy/public webui-copy/public/webinterface

You can now use the included xslt stylesheet to convert xml files to html using:

xsltproc webui-copy/public/webcaosdb.xsl test.xml > test.html

As the generated html file still contains invalid references to /webinterface/1602145811 you have to replace all occurrences of /webinterface with webui-copy/public`.