[THREDDS #IZW-298295]: Customise TDS [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

> Hi Lansing,
> 
> Thanks for taking times to answer my question. I got some of the issues 
> working. However on http://localhost:8080/thredds/catalog.html page I like to 
> include our banner/footer in to the page. Is it possible to do it? Is this 
> page construct by java class or jsp? Can you please show me how it can be 
> done?
> 
> Cheers,
> Ken
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Unidata THREDDS Support [mailto:address@hidden]
> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2012 5:21 AM
> To: Ken Toch
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: [THREDDS #IZW-298295]: Customise TDS [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
> 
> Hello Ken,
> 
> Thanks for writing in with questions.  If the answers I've interspersed below 
> don't help, please follow up.
> 
> Thanks,
> Lansing Madry
> Unidata
> Boulder, Colorado
> 
> > Hi Support,
> >
> > I name is Ken Toch and I am working for Bureau Meteorology in
> > system. Recently I have managed to get TDS (thredds) up and running on
> > our server. There are two questions I need to ask and I hope you can
> > help me to customise the way thredds were setup.
> >
> > 1. Because this is government website and the major concern is
> > security. To get thredds running I have to deploy war file under
> > tomcat/webapps (/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/) this directory owns by
> > root (the people who is looking after the web security). Anyway
> > I have managed to deploy thredds outside of tomcat/webapps, which
> > is /web/webapps/ (this directory I have access to) but I got HTTP
> > status 404 - /thredds/catalog.html. This I believed (I could be
> > wrong but may be you can help me) may be I didn't create symlink
> > under /usr/share/tomcat6/content to /var/lib/tomcat6/content/ (these
> > two directories owns by root). Okay here is my question why thredds
> > need these two directories and is there a way to customise thredds
> > to look for other dir like /web/webapps etc. If so, could you please
> > instruct me?
> >
> I'm not exactly sure what you are getting at with your question, here.  Did 
> you really mean to ask whether Tomcat can be configured to look in a 
> directory other than ${tomcat_home}/webapps/ for a warfile or a deployed web 
> application?  While it is not something that I have done, I think you should 
> look at the appBase attribute, as described here in the Tomcat 7 
> documentation:
> 
> http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/host.html
> 
> As far as I know, you can direct THREDDS to look for data files in almost any 
> directory on the filesystem by pointing the 
> ${tomcat_home}/content/thredds/catalog.xml file in the correct direction.
> > 2. I have mentioned that I have successfully deployed
> > thredds under tomcat/webapps now next step is to make
> > http://localhost:8080/thredds/catalog.html look and feel to our webpage
> > (it is government policy). I believed, the bit that display the catalog
> > page is
> >
> > /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/thredds/WEBINF/jsp/thredds/server/catalog/catalog.jsp
> >
> > I have made some changes on catalog.jsp re-run tomcat and redeploy
> > thredds but I didn't see the effect on /thredds/catalog.html page.
> >
> > What did I go wrong?
> >
> > How can I customise catalog.html to include standard header/css etc?
> >
> Take a look in the tutorial at the documentation on THREDDS configuration:
> 
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/tds4.3/tutorial/Basic-threddsConfig_xml.html
> 
> Near the bottom of this section is a bit on the appearance of generated HTML 
> pages.  Let me know if it does not help.
> > Many thanks advance for your helps.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ken Toch
> >
> >
> 
> Ticket Details
> ===================
> Ticket ID: IZW-298295
> Department: Support THREDDS
> Priority: High
> Status: Open
> 
> 
Hi Ken,

I took a look at this today, and the short answer is that it is not easy.  I 
found out that the catalog.jsp file (under the WEB-INF directory) is a red 
herring, and I had to dig into the htmlwriter to make changes to the catalog 
page.  You probably don't want to do that.  I also found out that footers are a 
vexing problem, but HTML 5 is supposed to help with that by creating a <footer> 
tag.  This sort of feature is on our short list to fix, as part of refactoring 
the web pages to make them a little more flexible.  In the meantime, I'll try 
to figure out something quick and dirty for you.

Cheers,
  Lansing

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: IZW-298295
Department: Support THREDDS
Priority: High
Status: Open