Installing Flexmonster Data Server as a Windows/Unix service

This guide describes how to install Flexmonster Data Server as a service. Flexmonster Pivot can be downloaded here. You can also learn about other ways of using the Data Server.

The main benefits of using the Data Server as a Windows/Unix service are:

• Can be managed via a convenient GUI tool — Flexmonster Admin Panel.
• Runs in the background.
• Starts automatically with the OS.
• Can be configured to automatically restart on a crash.
• Hard to close unintentionally.

Supported operating systems

The Data Server is available for the following operating systems:

• Windows (32-bit and 64-bit).
• macOS (64-bit and ARM64).
• Ubuntu/Linux (64-bit and ARM64).

Installing Flexmonster Data Server

Prerequisites

• Flexmonster CLI
  Install it with the following command:

  npm install -g flexmonster-cli

To install the Data Server, continue with the following steps.

Step 1. Download

To get the Data Server, run the flexmonster add fds command:

flexmonster add fds -r

This command installs the Data Server for your operating system and runs it as a service. Besides, the command installs Flexmonster Admin Panel — a graphical user interface for the Data Server as a service.

Note The Admin Panel will not connect to the Data Server used as a DLL or as a console application.

Now the Data Server is installed as a service on your machine. The Data Server's files can be found in the flexmonster‑data‑server/ folder in your working directory.

Step 2. See the download package structure

Let’s have a look at the flexmonster‑data‑server/ folder’s structure:

• Flexmonster-Admin-Panel — the file to install Flexmonster Admin Panel.
• flexmonster-data-server — an executable version of Flexmonster Data Server.
• service-install — the executable file to install the Data Server as a service.
• service-uninstall — the executable file to uninstall the Data Server as a service.
• flexmonster-config.json — Flexmonster Data Server configuration file. It contains a configured ready-to-use CSV data source "sample-index".
  Note that if you have been using the Data Server prior to version 2.9.58, the Data Server possibly uses another flexmonster-config.json file when run as a service.
• sample-data/data.csv — the file with sample CSV data to create "sample-index".

Migrating existing configurations

If you have already used the Data Server, you can import your existing configurations using Flexmonster Admin Panel:

1. Open the Admin Panel.
2. Go to the Settings tab.
3. Scroll down and use the Import configuration file functionality.

See how it can be done:

Connecting to the Data Server

Step 1. Embed the component into your webpage

If Flexmonster is not yet embedded, set up an empty component in your webpage:

let pivot = new Flexmonster({
  container: "pivotContainer",
  componentFolder: "node_modules/flexmonster/",
  toolbar: true
});

<FlexmonsterReact.Pivot
 toolbar={true}
/>

<fm-pivot
 [toolbar]="true">
</fm-pivot>

<Pivot
 toolbar
/>

Step 2. Configure the report

To connect to Flexmonster Data Server, configure the report as follows:

let pivot = new Flexmonster({
  container: "pivotContainer",
  componentFolder: "node_modules/flexmonster/",
  toolbar: true,
  report: {
    dataSource: {
      type: "api",
      url: "http://localhost:9500",
      index: "sample-index"
    }
  }
});

Note The "sample-index" is the index predefined in the Admin Panel.

Open the webpage in the browser: the pivot table with the sample CSV data is shown.

Uninstalling the Data Server

To completely uninstall the Data Server as a service, you need to delete the Data Server's executable, the Admin Panel, and the Data Server folders.

Note The uninstallation is irreversible, so ensure you back up the flexmonster-config.json file.

Learn how to uninstall the Data Server depending on the operating system it runs on:

service-uninstall.bat

sh ./service-uninstall.sh

./service-uninstall

What’s next?

You may be interested in the following articles:

• Data sources guide
• Flexmonster Admin Panel guide
• Security and authorization guide
• Troubleshooting the Data Server