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).

You should also ensure that your operating system supports the version of .NET that is used in Flexmonster Data Server, which is currently .NET 8. Read more here: Common issues with the Data Server.

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:

const pivot = new Flexmonster({
  container: "pivotContainer",
  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:

const pivot = new Flexmonster({
  container: "pivotContainer",
  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