Category: GITHUB

Installation of Nubuilder through CPANEL

Background – I wrote sometime ago about an open source low code project called nubuilder originally started by a Steven Copely – it has been steadily and consistently developed over the years and Steven has since shared development with some other talented individuals. I took another look at it recently to see whether  I could find a way of installing and playing about with it on my existing web hosting provider…

and…

If you have a webhost that allows you access to a CPANEL client to configure your hosting environment then it is highly likely that you can set up a nubuilder low code environment. If you have a webhost that allows access to a CPANEL account AND allows you unlimited sub domains and unlimited storage then it is highly likely that you will be able to create a nubuilder low code environment for zero cost!!! 

A quick search online found that the following offer CPANEL / unlimited subdomains / unlimited MYSQL

A2Hosting

WebhostingHub (which are a subsidiary of InMotion)

SiteGround

There is usually a limit on the size of an individual MYSQL database but it is so high as to not be an issue.

Configuration Instructions:

This post was adapted from Steven Copleys video which can be found here..

Installing on Bluehost

First below I have blanked out my cpanel username variable with either a grey circular box or in code I’ve replaced it with an X. This variable is implemented by CPANEL software to allow resellers to ensure that thousands of users on the same servers do not accidentally duplicate directory and filenames. The username can only be accessed with an additional password but it is not generally available to anyone but the host admin and as such is additional security. It will be used in many of the default settings when creating things like databases and directory names.

Firstly Log into your providers CPANEL

Look to the Domains section and within it there should be a Subdomains icon.

and select the Subdomains icon

Create a new subdomain

Here is the Subdomain field I have typed nbexample – the document root will automatically be completed

Hit the Create button

Next we create a database

go to MySQLDatabases within the Databases menu

Now we create a New User

Here I do the same

username will be X_nb4exampledbuser

password

BlueSkyIsEverywhereToday2020

Hit the create user and Go Back and add the user to the database

On hitting add you will be asked to select the privileges that the user has over the database just indicate that you would like to allow them all privileges

Then hit the make changes button and you can if you want then check the MySQL databases and check that the database exists and that the user is there.

Next we go to the Nbuilder Github site and download the master file but zipped

Nubuilder 4.5 on GitHub

And select the Dowload ZIP option from the Code drop down list.

This will download a master file to your dowload folder – In your browser window in the bottom left you will see the file like this

You now need to go back to the main CPANEL hub and look for section marked Files and look for the File Manager option. In my CPANEL it looks it is a red icon.

The subdomain will be created as a directory within your root home directory and in my example looks like this. You will be transferring the master zip file into this directory so you want to select it.

Next hit the Upload button and navigate to find

nubuilder-4.5-master.zip

And load it into your base directory. It should look something like this now

Next you want to extract it..

It will then ask where you wish to extract it to

I will normally not put anything in here as it creates its own directory.

There will be a short delay after which you will be presented with a dialog that shows the outcome of the extraction process.

You should now see a new directory in which in my case is called nuBuilder-4.5-master.

I don’t like hypens dots and capitals or special characters in directory names. So

  • I rename it to nubuilder45
  • Convert to all lower case
  • Delete the old zip file

Next we want to go into the nuBuilder45 file and open up the nuconfig.php file.

This is where we will link allow the nubuilder php  to link to the created mysql database.

Right mouse click and select edit.

And find the following lines

Now remember from the start our database name / user and password are as follows.

  • Database : X_nb4exampledb
  • Username : X_nb4exampledbuser
  • Password : BlueSkyIsEverywhereToday2020

And hit the changes..

Next we want to create a very simple index.php file – alter the path to suit your subdomain / domain and directory where you extracted the nubuilder master file to.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.location.replace("https://nbexample.cloudydatablog.net/nubuilder45")
</script>
</body>
</html>
</body>
</html>

It may well look like this

This simple index.php file is placed in the root of the new subdomain you created

Now you should be able to go to the new subdomain in any browser on the planet and …

 

Congratulations you have successfully configured a default instance of nubuilder – your journey to creating low code online databases can now begin..

PS the default credentials are

Username : globeadmin

Password : nu

Please change these immediately in the nuconfig.php file when you get a chance.

For more information on starting to design and develop with nubuilder please follow the link below

link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GIT Hub Repository : getting started with online code storage

One of the principles of the 3 2 1 rule of backup storage is that you should have one backup copy off site. Great but for code this can be tricky as you constantly need to be changing so how do you set up a continuous pipeline to allow for changes in code. Now you could use something like Google Cloud which is excellent and is completely acceptable however I wanted to use GIT mainly because it is better adapted to actually editing code if needed be (important for removing security parameters in things like webconfig files) , has finer grained level of detail in terms of control and is considered a professional format for storing code and version code. Of course with greater flexibility comes great complexity. So here are my beginnings on using GITHub.

First things first register with GITHub

GIT Hub Website

I would then recommend that you download Git Bash – this is a local program that will allow you to better synch your files between your development machine and your online github repository. I found the following Video Tutorial excellent in getting up and running in particular in downloading and installing GITHub Bash and linking it to your GITHUB repository.

GIT Hub (Good Tutorial on starting out)

Now here I am going to setup my local repository’s in the root directory and simply call the directory git

c:/git

For my purposes I have started by create a repository in online GITHUB

The open GITBASH

You will be presented with the following window

The first tricky thing is to navigate the bash prompt
execute the following commands

cd /c
cd git

Next we are going to Clone a repository from out GITHUB web account to our local machine.
Cloning does two main things it creates a sub-directory in this case within the c:\git directory and then copies all the files down from the web repository.

The command to do this is
git clone (followed by the url of your repository obtained here)

and execute it something similar to the below should now appear – a new sub directory should appear on your local machine with all files within it. Congratulations you have just downloaded all these files you could do this with any open source project on GITHub

Next lets see how we can download from the website masters or alternatively upload from local.

You might be thinking well why do I want to upload from local when I see that you can cut and paste directly into the web browser and commit from there. Yes good but the browser user interface won’t allow you to transfer more than 100 files which for web applications is a killer.

Now the same thing can be done with whole directories so simply use explorer to upload the item into the local directory and then push from there.

OK uploading from LOCAL
As an example lets make a change to the readme file and try and get it to be accepted onto our online account.
Got to your new directory and edit the README.md file in your editor of choice with some kind of change.

eg

Now back in bash perform the following;

Navigate to the directory and if the file was already

git commit -m “Fourth commit” README.md

This has committed the change in that particular file to the local git repository – this is important without a commit git doesn’t know anything has changed. Next you want to commit the local to the master web version

Execute the following command
git push -u origin master

Now you can go to your web repository and you should see that README.md has changed

Now the same thing can be done with whole directories so simply use explorer to upload the item into the local directory and then push from there.

DOWNLOADING changes from GITHub Repository to local.
This time lets make an edit to GITHUB README.md through the web repository commit it

git pull origin master

And we see that local has now been updated with the web repository

But what if we need to add a complete directory or a file to local and then upload it.

Here we first need to add the directory or file to local

For example create a new file in the local directory called MyNewFile.txt

git add MyNewFile.txt

Before transfering this file to your github account you need to commit it first.

git commit -m “comment message” MyNewFile.txt

you then need to push this to your Git hub account

git push -u origin master

Going back to your GIT Hub repository on your account and refreshing the screen you should see the item.

The above processes should get you started with GITHUB if things start to go wrong with errors try the below.

Note it would appear that if you wish to overwrite a local file or directory and then add it to your remote repository you still have to go through the ADD procedure. (Initially I had assumed that because a directory might already be there you might not need to add it)

So if you were going to overwrite the output folder it would be a case of
git add -A
git commit -m "Output file overwritten"
git push origin master

REMOVING a repository and starting again..
Removing a repository from local which can be useful if like me you make changes to local and web version independently and it has issues merging the two and prevents the merge and starting out wasn’t sure how to fix everything maunally. I found the easiest way was to make sure you were happy with the online version. Delete the local copy and then clone to local again.

Firstly navigate to the repository directory you wish to delete and then

$ rm -rf .git

Now you can delete the directory and go forward but remember you will need to Clone the repository and start from there.