Update of an existing installation

This page describes how to upgrade an existing installation to a newer version. Existing apps, app templates and report templates as well as uploaded bundles are preserved.

Before updating

  • Note the update notes in the Release Notes of the current version as well as all versions that lie between the current version and the version you have installed so far.

  • It is recommended to make a backup of the database before updating your installation.

Determine the currently used version

To identify which version you are running, open the URL https://<yourserver>/mapapps/info.txt.

Updating the installation

If you want to upgrade map.apps to a newer version the following steps have to be performed:

  1. Stop the Apache Tomcat server

  2. Remove the old map.apps context from %TOMCAT%\webapps\ (move it to a backup folder before deleting it completely).

  3. Extract the new map.apps version to %TOMCAT%\webapps\.

  4. Edit the file %TOMCAT%\webapps\ct-mapapps-webapp-4.8.4\WEB-INF\classes\custom-application.properties and point the data.directory.location property to your .mapapps folder. This folder contains the customized configuration file (application.properties) of your previous map.apps installation. The step is only required if the location of the folder .mapapps differs from the default location.

  5. Start the Apache Tomcat server.

Simplified update with external application.properties file
Do not modify the file %TOMCAT%\webapps\WEB-INF\classes\application.properties. Use an external configuration file instead as described in configuration.

Caching

If you use the same name for the web application (for example %TOMCAT%\webapps\mapapps instead of %TOMCAT%\webapps\ct-mapapps-webapp-4.8.4), the browser cache on every client machine has to be deleted, to make sure that all changes take effect.

Default Apps

When creating a new app, you can choose to create a default app. Template files for these apps are located in the map.apps data directory (Files: default-app-*.zip). The path to this directory is defined with the parameter data.directory.location in file %TOMCAT%\webapps\ct-mapapps-webapp-4.8.4\WEB-INF\classes\custom-application.properties. If you haven’t made changes to the default apps, it is recommended to delete those from the map.apps data directory, to make sure that updated versions of the template files are copied from the new map.apps version.

Product Extensions

If you are running map.apps product extensions refer to section "Compatibility mode map.apps Manager 3.x" in Installation of Product Extensions.

Custom Development

In case you have custom bundles in your map.apps installation that make use of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript check for breaking changes that might effect your implementation.

Update existing apps

After updating map.apps 3.x to 4.x, it might be necessary to adjust existing apps, to make them use the 3.x-versions of the map.apps bundles. This step is only required when updating to map.apps 4.x for the first time.

Select all apps in the app list of map.apps Manager and click the tool Manage product versions in selected apps. Select map.apps in the first dialog. In the next dialog select the map.apps version 3.10.8. You can also define the update policy for your apps, which specifies how your apps deal with higher versions of map.apps 3.x:

  • none: Your apps only work with map.apps version 3.10.8.

  • Bugfix: Your apps are also compatible with all bugfix releases starting with version 3.10.8.

  • Minor: Your apps are also compatible with all minor releases starting with version 3.10.8.

Bundles with version 4.8.4 are not used for your apps. After the settings have been applied, a summary of all apps is shown. For each app a detailed list of all rewritten bundles and their versions is available.

Now all your apps are set to the 3.x-version of the map.apps bundles and can be used.

Usage of App-Templates

Existing app-templates have to be updated and uploaded manually. Otherwise when creating new apps the previously described step has to be repeated for every new app based on the map.apps 3.x app-template.

To do so, you can create an app based on the app-template, update it, export the app without changes and import it again by overwriting the app-template.