Configuring the Alpha Anywhere Development Server
Description
A guide to configuring the Alpha Anywhere Development Server for testing your web and mobile applications.
Discussion
The Alpha Anywhere Development Server can be used to deploy web applications for local testing. The development server must be configured and running in order to perform testing using Live Preview, Remote Test, or publishing files locally to test in the browser. This guide explains how to configure the Development Server so you can test your web applications.
Important Notice for Community Edition Users
This tutorial was built using the full Alpha Anywhere Development Environment. This tutorial is intended for developers using older versions of Alpha Anywhere, which did not automatically configure the Development Server to use a port that is not in use.
Alpha Anywhere Community Edition and the full Alpha Anywhere Development Environment automatically configure the Development Server to use an unused port during installation.
Images in this tutorial may not match what you see in Community Edition.
On the Web Projects Control Panel, open the Development Server Settings. They can be accessed under the Web menu. Select "Development Server".
The Server Port is the port number that requests to the Alpha Anywhere Server are made. The default value for the Server Port is 80. In a production environment, requests to the Alpha Anywhere Server will be made on port 80. However, in a development environment, port 80 is usually in use by other applications. If you start the development server using port 80, you will see an error message stating port 80 is already in use.
Change the Server Port to another port number. Pick a high-number port, such as 8080, for your Server Port setting.
Error message stating that Port 80 is already in use.
Changing the server port to 8080.Click Save to save the changes to the Development Server. If the Development Server was already running, click the Restart Server button for the changes to take effect. If the Development Server is not running, click Start Server to start the server.
Prompt asking to confirm starting the development server.If this is the first time you have started the development server, you will be asked if you wish to create the Document Root "C:\A5Webroot". This directory is where all files are published for local testing. Click Yes to create the directory.
Message asking to create the C:\A5Webroot directory.You will see a confirmation popup that the development server settings were saved. Click OK.
Popup confirming that settings were saved.Windows Firewall may display a Windows Security Alert when the Alpha Anywhere application server starts. Click the Allow access button to allow Alpha Anywhere to communicate through the firewall. If access is not given to Alpha Anywhere, you may not be able to use some features, such as Remote Testing, on your system.
Windows Security Alert from Windows Firewall asking to allow Alpha Anywhere to communicate over the network.The development server should be running. Check the Server Status. The icon should appear green with the words "Running" next to it. Underneath the server status is the License State. The license state indicates how many simultaneous sessions you can have.
Click Close to close the Development Server Settings and return to the Web Projects Control Panel.
Now that the Development Server is configured and running, you can now use the Live Preview and Remote Testing features in Alpha Anywhere. You can also test applications published to the local webroot. Follow the Publishing Applications guide to create a publishing profile to publish your web application to the local webroot.
See Also