Deployment

This page is for IT administers, Web masters and computer literates who have basic skills of deploying a Website. The files needed are available in the Download area.

During development, the frontend and the backend are often running on different hosts. Almost all features of the app could run well in such config, except the locally hosted pictures. The locally hosted pictures are using relative patch in img src, and such constraint is good for static readonly deployment.

The backend and the fontend should be hosted in the same host. And the DB engine is with Sqlite.

Deploy to IIS

Prerequisites

1. ASP.NET Core Runtime Hosting Bundle for Windows IIS.
2. A Website created with Application Pool of "No Managed Code".

Installation

1. Either install the MSI file or extract the Zip file to the Website root folder.
2. Alter bin/appsettings.json with `UseHttps: true` to enforce HTTPS.

Remarks:

• It may be beneficial to set a IIS rewrite rule in Web.config to further enforce HTTPS, while this is optional, since the app itself along with ASP.NET Core Runtime Hosting Bundle is capable of redirecting HTTP calls to HTTPS.
• Single Page Applications often have rewrite rules defined either in Web server (IIS or Apache) config for entering the app from any valid frontend routes. Web.config coming with the app supports such. However, when the app is running with Kestrel, web.config is not used.

Hints:

If you don't want to purchase a SSL certificate, you may use "Let's Encrypt".

Desktop App

The releases for desktop app are basically the same as the ones for Web App, however, the release is hosted in a local Web server Kestrel included in ASP.NET Core Runtime.

Windows

Prerequisites

1. ASP.NET Core Runtime

Installation

1. Either install the MSI file or extract the Zip file to a desired folder.
2. In folder, double click "CreateShortcut.bat" which will create a shortcut on Windows desktop. This shortcut actually runs `StartPoetryApp.ps1` which will launch PoetryApp.exe and open the default Web browser browsing http://localhost:5300.

You can copy or move the shortcut to any launch area of Windows.

Hints:

In case you have other apps running at port 5300, you need to change the following settings:

1. File `bin/appsettings.json`: Alter Kestrel/Endpoints/Http/Url to "http://localhost:PortNotInUse", for example, "http://localhost:5310"
2. File `StartPoetryApp.ps1`: Alter respective URL of "start-process".

Remarks:

• The desktop app's backend is running on Kestrel which does not read web.config with some rewrite rules, and these rules are for entering the app from any valid frontend routes. However, because you almost always enter the frontend the first time through the startup URL, and the service worker of the frontend will then later on take care of the routing. So eventually you later can access the app from any valid frontend routes.
• Likewise, the static read only variant (Poetry Viewer) of the app also rely on the service worker for routing. Poetry Viewer is often hosted in a server without explicit backend and you may not have control of the server config for the rewrite rules.

MacOS

local app on MacOS

Prerequisites

1. ASP.NET Core Runtime for macOS Binaries Arm64 or x64

Installation

1. Extract the Zip file to a desired folder, for example, "/Users/YourUsername/Documents/PoetryApp"

Execution

Terminal

1. Under "/Users/YourUsername/Documents/PoetryApp", execute "dotnet bin/PoetryApp.dll". And this will launch Kestrel Web server hosting http://localhost:5300
2. Open browser Safari or Chrome, and go to http://localhost:5300

Hints:

You may want to create a shell script to execute PoetryApp. For example:

<sourcelang="bash"> dotnet bin/PoetryApp.dll & sleep 2 open http://localhost:5300 </sounce>

And don't forget to apply "chmod 755" to the sh file.