Example: New Horizons

In the remaining sections of this Getting Started chapter, you will be guided to build a Frank configuration yourself. Your configuration will serve an imaginary firm New Horizons. New Horizons allows travelers to book travels online, which constitute visits to hotels, apartments, campings or any other place where travelers can sleep. New Horizons makes traveling easier, because the traveler with a complex travel does not have to negotiate with the individual hosts. New Horizons takes the responsibility of paying them.

Of course New Horizons has many user stories. In the Getting Started, we focus on a very specific task. A booking accepted by New Horizons, which can constitute multiple visits, should be stored in a relational database for further processing.

To get started, please do the following:

1. In the franks directory you created in Frank!Runner Installation, add a new project directory Frank2Manual. Within that directory, create configurations/NewHorizons for the configuration you are going to create.

2. In the NewHorizons directory, open a new file Configuration.xml.

3. Give that file the following contents:

   <Configuration
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../FrankConfig.xsd">
   </Configuration>
   

4. In directory Frank2Manual, add file build.xml with the following contents:

   <project default="restart">
       <target name="restart">
           <basename property="project.dir" file="${basedir}"/>
           <condition property="exe" value="../frank-runner/restart.bat" else="/bin/bash">
               <os family="windows"/>
           </condition>
           <condition property="arg" value="../frank-runner/restart.sh" else="">
               <os family="unix"/>
           </condition>
           <exec executable="${exe}" vmlauncher="false" failonerror="true">
               <arg value="${arg}"/>
               <arg value="-Dprojects.dir=${basedir}/.."/>
               <arg value="-Dproject.dir=${project.dir}"/>
           </exec>
       </target>
   </project>
   

   Warning

   This step should be sufficient to run your Frank configuration from within Visual Studio Code or Eclipse. However on March 24 2023 there is an issue with the Task Explorer plugin of Visual Studio Code. This motivates the next step that allows you to run your work using a Windows batch file. See https://github.com/ibissource/frank-runner for more information.

5. In directory Frank2Manual, add file restart.bat with the following contents:

   call ..\frank-runner\ant.bat
   if %errorlevel% equ 0 goto end
   rem https://superuser.com/questions/527898/how-to-pause-only-if-executing-in-a-new-window
   set arg0=%0
   if [%arg0:~2,1%]==[:] if not [%TERM_PROGRAM%] == [vscode] pause
   :end
   

   Warning

   If you are working on Linux or on a Mac, you need restart.sh instead. See https://github.com/ibissource/frank-runner.

6. To check these steps, please start the Frank!Framework. To do this, run script restart.bat from a command prompt. You may have to change directory to the Frank2Manual directory before doing this.

7. When the Frank!Frame runs, go to the Adapter Status page. You should see a tab “NewHorizons”.

8. Check that your directory Frank2Manual/configurations now contains FrankConfig.xsd, the file referenced within Configuration.xml. Placing this file is the job of the Frank!Runner.

9. The Frank!Runner should also create a .gitignore file that ignores FrankConfig.xsd for checkin. Please check that such a file has been created.

The details of what we want to build are in the next section.