The JavahelpServlet

Access JavaHelp documentation systems on the World-Wide-Web.

Copyright © Jens Gulden – mail@jensgulden.de
This software comes with absolutely NO WARRANTY. See file licence.txt for details.

Description
- Related Documentation
Installation
Environment
- Web-Server
- CLASSPATH
Limitations
See Also

DESCRIPTION

The JavahelpServlet is a Java Servlet that allows accessing JavaHelp documentation systems on the World WideWeb. It uses exactly the same input files as the original JavaHelp system and transforms it to HTML which imitates the original JavaHelp browser' look and feel.

INSTALLATION

When the file JavahelpServlet.class is installed as a Servlet on your web-server, initialization parameters need to be set to control the JavahelpServlet. See your web-server's documentation for details about how to install Java Servlets.

Initialization parameters are:

Required. This declares a new help system, named 'doc1' that will be displayed when calling the servlet as http://.../.../JavahelpServlet?doc=doc1. The parameter is the public base-url of the help system's files. For example, if you help system's files are accessible on 'http://www.myserver.com/javahelp/...', specify the base URL 'http://www.myserver.com/javahelp/'. (This parameter will be copied textually into the generated HTML documents.)

doc1.helpset.local=file-url-of-doc1.hs

Required. This parameter is the url pointing to the main .hs-file that describes the documentation system.
As the files of the Javahelp documentation systems are also available via HTTP, this could point to the .hs-file in the same HTTP-directory as specified by the xxx.helpset.online parameter (see above). However, in most cases you will serve the individual files of the documentation system from the same web-server where the JavahelpServlet runs on, so the .hs-file is also accessible locally through a file://-URL. It is recommended to specify a file://-URL, this is faster because the JavahelpServlet does not need to establish an HTTP-connection to 'it's own' web-server.
For example, if you help system's files are locally stored in /www/myproject/javahelp, specify 'file:///www/myproject/javahelp/myproject.hs'.

doc1.start=relative-url-of-startpage

Optional. This specifies the start page that is initially loaded into the display area of the online help browser.

All parameter names are case-sensitive.

ENVIRONMENT

Web-Server

To run the JavahelpServlet, you need to install it on a web-server that can execute Java Servlets. The web-server needs to implement the Java Servlet API 1.0 (or above), running in a Java Runtime Environment 1.1 (or above) sandbox.

CLASSPATH

Besides the usual system classes and the classes of the Servlet API (which naturally are included in the classpath set by the web-server), the classpath should provide access to the archives jaxp.jar and parser.jar from the Java API for XML Processing. These archives are bundled with the JavahelpServlet distribution. You can get a more current version from the Java technology and XML home page.

LIMITATIONS

There is no search feature included in the current version.