Forum OpenACS Q&A: New OpenACS Tutorial

Hello all,

Rocael Hernandez and I have been working on a new tutorial for OpenACS, it is aimed at absolute beginners, it covers some simple installation process, the creation of an application and some introduction to the use of ACS Objects, it leaves out some parts of working with OpenACS, but this is really aimed at just the first few days of a new developer.

We have been working on this for quite some time and are very proud to present the first version we feel is ready for public viewing:

Here is the link:

https://openacs.org/storage/view/tutorial%5C/OpenACS_Tutorial.pdf

Hi Cesareo,

thanks for the feedback and the breakdown of the contents.

And yes the content is probably intended for someone with the time to read it and some kind of technical background, in the end it covers the creation of a pretty basic application but trying to use as most of the OpenACS functionalities as possible without making it too complex.

About the online version, I'm working on it and will let you know when it is ready.

Hi Emma,

I'm glad you liked it :) and, yes, the content of this tutorial will become part of the documentation in the near future, I have taken the job of updating the documentation for the next release ( job #1 described here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjwq8c5_9g7jgtbcm ) I'm starting to plan how I will be approaching this job and will post my work plan to get some feedback before starting, but definitely the content of the tutorial will find its way there.

Nice!

You might want to consider putting it up on flossmanuals.net and/or having it available for purchase on Lulu.

Hi Caroline,

Very good idea, thank you :)

I agree, will be simpler to use subsite applications, although the tutorial also goes directly to what you have to do and doesn't stop on the other things you might be able to do at site-map.

Yes, we need to correct the proc declaration to use auto-documentation, and do a very brief note about documentation features.
Also a note on the sequence hack can be made, I really do not expect newbies to focus much on that, maybe we can add a footnote.

Not sure whether we'll keep the sources in Word as they are now or not. So far they are good for producing the pdf, we still need to figure out that. Formatting is important for the tutorial.

Hi César!, thanks for this great tutorial, i have some suggestions,

I tried the tutorial using:
sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.3
and works fine.

In page 7, after you start the OpenACS service you can explain the user to browse http://localhost:8000 and fill the form an start the installation scripts for OpenACS and restart the service because if you don't do this you can't try http://localhost:8000/helloworld (it shows a blank page)

In page 8, normal user doesn't have permissions to write on /usr/share/openacs/www maybe you can explain how to change permissions like:

sudo usermod -a -G www-data ubuntuuser
sudo chmod -R 775 /usr/share/openacs/www

logout and login

In page 15, you have the information to create a package, but if you follow all steps you get:

The package key should contain only letters, numbers, and hyphens (dashes) and it must be lowercase.

You should write todo instead of Todo for the Package Key value.

Best regards,
Hector

hi,César Clavería ,I am a chinese ,I want translate the tutorial in chinese, can you give me a permission?

thank you very much ,please sent me your word format document,my email:mailto:ttkk1024@gmail.com

Thank you very much Gonzalo, of course you have my permission and everyone's gratitude.

y hey, una version en español claro que es importante y util, ya hubiese querido yo algo asi cuando empece hace algunos años.

And being able to offer this on English, Spanish and Chinese pretty much covers a great % of the world population.

I have a question ,when I go to http://localhost:8000/acs-admin/,I need admin permission,how can I get admin permission?

Something to add explictly to the tutorial, perhaps ...

I use openacs on the windows,when I go to http://localhost:8000/acs-admin/,It always need email and password,but I don't know how can get administrator's email and password ,altough I am administrator

When you first install OpenACS you fill out a form including an email address and password. This is the email and password you use to log in as the administrator.

The Windows instructions page moved to here:

http://www.spazioit.com/pages_en/sol_inf_en/win32-openacs_en/

(I guess I'll need to update the tutorial)

this url is bad ,I can't link it

I am sorry , because our government don't allow us access the site

Hello all,

I'm very pleased to announce the OpenACS tutorial first translation, we have now a Chinese version of our tutorial that I'm sure will be helpful to many people.

Thanks to our member ttkk 1024 for this translation.

OpenACS Tutorial (Chinese): https://openacs.org/storage/view/tutorial%5C/OpenAcs_tutorial_zh.pdf

Hi Iuiri,

Of course! a Portuguese translation would be very welcomed!

And any improvements to the tutorial will also be helpful, there are MS Word versions linked on this thread so you can use them to base yours.

thank you,

Cesar

I have uploaded it to the official Brazilian Openacs commuminity website

http://www.softwarepublico.gov.br/dotlrn/clubs/openacs/file-storage/download/Tutorial+OpenACS?file%5fid=18012882

Although, i am still interested to upload it on openacs file-storage

Looks like even after registering I do not have permissions to download it. Could you check that? or send it to me by email? Thanks

Hi. I'm following the tutorial, but my instalation is /usr/share/aolserver4/dotlrn, because I want to build a package for dotlrn. I'm saving the examples under dotlrn/www. The hello example works well, but with the connection example I'm having a server error "due to a system error on this server" running http://localhost:8000/connection

Maybe you can give some help. Thank you.

Thank you, Cesar, for your fast reply :)

The error.log says "Error: return: failed to redirect 'GET /global/file-not-found.html': exceeded recursion limit of 3"

Have a good day.

Hi Jim.
I already fix the problem: I delete everything and start a new installation. All is running! Thank God.
Have a good day.

Dear Christopher,

this error message comes from PostgreSQL and tells you that the database does not know about a user "wwww-data". When you installed OpenACS with the default values of the install-ns and install-oacs scripts, then the created postgres user is named "nsadmin", the database is "oacs-5-8".

In this setup, sudo psql -d oacs-5-8 -U nsadmin should work.

Christopher, see page 48 (and just prior) of the tutorial. The error translates to: table "todo_item" doesn't exist.
cheers

Hello Gustaf,

This is what I got when I enter the commands:

postgres=# \du
List of roles
Role name | Attributes | Member of
-----------+------------------------------------------------+-----------
nsadmin | Superuser, Create role, Create DB | {}
postgres | Superuser, Create role, Create DB, Replication | {}

postgres=# \l
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+-------------+-------------+-----------------------
oacs-5-8 | postgres | UTF8 | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 |
postgres | postgres | UTF8 | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 |
template0 | postgres | UTF8 | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres + postgres=CTc/postgres
template1 | postgres | UTF8 | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres + postgres=CTc/postgres
(4 rows)

Hello Gustaf,

I'm using ubuntu 14.04 LT now. Is there any location where I can find the final version of the tutorial code? I have copied all the code but continue to get error messages.

Hello Gustaf,

I'm getting errors that the database item doesn't exist. I'm trying to run through the tutorial to see how everything works before giving the system to a developer. I can at least complete the hello World! example.

Database operation "select" failed (exception ERROR, "ERROR: relation "todo_item" does not exist
LINE 8: from todo_item
^
")

ERROR: relation "todo_item" does not exist