How To: Configurations Instructions for Activiti-5.0.alpha4 to work with MySQL 5.1.49

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The follow tutorial must help you to configure activiti-5.0.alpha4 to work with MySQL 5.x, to let you have a correct setup configuration and a startup execution without any problems. You perhaps could be thinking that right now exists in Activiti’s documentation the instructions for configuration and installation, that’s correct, but after to follow such instructions, I did realize that some steps are missing, some tricks are mandatory and a bug exists. Therefore I am sharing my experience solution to avoid you a headache.

The follow softwares are mandatory. I am using practically the last release versions available of many of them.

• activiti-5.0.alpha4
• apache ant 1.8.1
• tomcat 6.0.29
• jdk1.6.0_21
• MySQL 5.1.49 – Community Server
• MySQL Java Driver Connector 5.1.13

I assume that all, but except for activiti are already installed and well configured. OK let’s go

The First step is unzip the activiti-5.0.alpha4.zip file to some specific location, for example D:\applications\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4. Since now I going to use …\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4 format.

The Second step is configure some .properties files. Therefore in
…\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\setup you going to see the follow files

• files (directory)
• build.h2.properties
• build.mysql.properties
• build.properties
• build.xml

Open build.properties, you going to see the follow content

# The db property should refer to the type of database that # you want to use. Currently only h2 and MySQL is supported. db=h2 # The tx property refers to the transaction environment # you want to use. Choose from {standalone} tx=standalone # Specify the version of Tomcat that you want to use. # We only tested with the given Tomcat version but in # theory any tomcat 6.0.x version should do fine. tomcat.version=6.0.26 # If you have tomcat already downloaded, point the # downloads.dir property to that directly. If tomcat is # not found in the downloads.dir, it will be automatically # downloaded there. # The downloads directory should be outside of /target/ # to avoid re-downloading after a clean downloads.dir=../../../downloads

The bold lines are the lines that we must to change. Therefore do the follow

• change db=h2 to db=mysql
• change tomcat.version=6.0.26 to tomcat.version=6.0.29 or your custom version
• change downloads.dir=../../../downloads to downloads.dir=D:/installerrepository/apache/tomcat/6.0.29, of course, or your custom location

Notice that I am using in the path the character / and not \ which is the normal used in Windows path, I mean:

• D:/installerrepository/apache/tomcat/6.0.29 (you must use)
• D:\installerrepository\apache\tomcat\6.0.29 (used by Windows)

Note: Be sure that in your downloads.dir path target exists your tomcat installer with extension .zip like apache-tomcat-6.0.29.zip, Why?, because in the build.xml file exists an ant target called tomcat.install which has these lines:

Help yourself matching the colors for a better understanding

<property         name="tomcat.distro"         value="${downloads.dir}/${tomcat.filename}" /> <available         property="is.tomcat.available"         file="${tomcat.distro}" />

where ${downloads.dir} was defined in build.properties file and ${tomcat.filename} is defined in the beginning of our build.xml file how you can see below.

<property          name="tomcat.filename"          value="apache-tomcat-${tomcat.version}.zip" />

notice the .zip in the value’s attribute and that ${tomcat.version} was defined too in build.properties file. Be advice that if the tomcat installer (.zip) is not found it in the downloads.dir target directory, then the ant target would proceed to download tomcat from Internet. See such target (tomcat.install) for more details.

The Third step is configure build.mysql.properties file, would be only necessary change the username and password

db=mysql jdbc.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/activiti jdbc.username=yourusername jdbc.password=yourpassword

The Fourth step is create a database in mysql called activiti. Such name must be used because was defined in the build.mysql.properties file with the property jdbc.url.

The Fifth step is copy our mysql java driver connector, like mysql-connector-java-5.1.13-bin.jar to …\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\lib directory.

The Sixth step is important, because is not included in Activiti’s documentation, in the follow directory …activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\setup\files\demo exists a unique file called
h2.data.sql, copy and paste such file in the same directory and rename it to mysql.data.sql.

The Seventh step is very important because is a bug that I found it, two JIRA issues were already created, one for this bug and the second about of an error message not very useful related with the previous bug, OK then in the follow ant task called deploy-bar just add the follow line <include name=”mysql-*.jar”/> below of <include name=”h2-*.jar”/>, thanks to Eran Riesenfeld to help me in resolve this problem.

That’s all, with the all previous instructions, you can now open a console or terminal and go to …\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\setup directory and run the ant command or ant demo.setup which is the default target in our build.xml file.

After the ant command execution, you going to see some new directorie(s) created within …\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\setup and …\activiti\activiti-5.0.alpha4\, futhermore of some files, and in your console or terminal you going to read a long output related with the creation of directories, unzip and copy of tomcat installer into a specific Activiti’s directory, creation of tables in the activiti database, copy of the examples available in Activiti distribution, the creation of a .bar file and the startup of tomcat. Perhaps other things that perhaps I am forgetting, but the most important are mentioned above.

Now you are ready to open your Web Browser and test the follow:

Webapp Name	URL	Description
Activiti Probe	http://localhost:8080/activiti-probe	The admin management console. Use this tool to see if the configured process engine is correctly initialized, DB tables contents.
Activiti Explorer	http://localhost:8080/activiti-explorer	The process engine user console. Use this tool to view your personal and candidate task lists and to complete tasks.
Activiti Modeler powered by Signavio	http://localhost:8080/activiti-modeler/p/explorer	The web based process designer tool. Use this tool to graphically author BPMN 2.0 compliant process definitions files.

I hope that this tutorial be useful for you.

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