Installing Helix Plan Web on macOS

Perform the following tasks to install and configure Helix Plan Web on macOS.

1. If nginx is not installed, install it using the following:

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brew update
brew install nginx

2. Download and install an LTS version of node.js, v18 or later.

3. Download Helix Plan Web and unzip it to your desired install location.

4. In HelixPlanAPI, rename config-example.env to .env.

5. Configure the server details in .env as required.

If you change the "port=4000" setting, you also need to update it in nginx.conf.

6. Navigate to HelixPlanWeb/HelixPlanAPI/ and run:

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npm ci --omit=dev

7. In ./certificates, replace the existing certificate example with your own.

This can either be a certificate acquired from a certificate authority or a self-signed certificate, generated locally with OpenSSL. The following is an example for generating a self-signed certificate with OpenSSL:

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openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -days 365 -keyout ./certificates/web.key -out ./certificates/web.pem

Example certificates are provided, which you can use to get up and running. To use these, rename the example files to web.key and web.pem.

The example certificates are for testing purposes only, and do not create a secure connection.

8. Copy client files to the web root directory - for example: /usr/local/var/www/

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cp -r client/dist/* /usr/local/var/www/
cp -r integrations/helix_core /usr/local/var/www/

9. Copy certificates folder into the nginx directory:

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cp -r certificates /usr/local/etc/nginx/

10. (Optional) To keep the /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf file, back it up.

If you have a nginx.conf file, you can merge applicable pieces from nginx-example.conf into your existing nginx.conf file. If you do this, you should skip Step 11.

11. Copy the example file:

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cp nginx-example.conf /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

12. Edit paths in /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf to match the paths on your file system:

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a. 
include /usr/local/etc/nginx/mime.types;

b.
ssl_certificate /usr/local/etc/nginx/certificates/web.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /usr/local/etc/nginx/certificates/web.key;

c.
root  /usr/local/var/www/;

d.
alias  /usr/local/var/www/helix_core/htmlwindows.template;

13. Start nginx as a service:

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 brew services start nginx

14. Run ./start.sh to start Helix Plan API.

15. Visit https://localhost

16. (Optional) If you want to enable API development on your server, refer to Step 6: Verify that the service has started.

17. If you want to let users open the Helix Plan desktop client from the web client, set the hostname for the Helix Plan Server.