Quick Start User Manual

Quick Start User Manual

Step-by-Step tutorial for tasting iPush with your Quick Start account

July 7, 2006, ICE Technology Corp.

Level: Beginning

Background

After you receive the free Quick Start account approved by ICE Technology, you may take few minutes to try the account out, see if it works or not.

Requirements

Before you start to exercise this tutorial, make sure your got:

1. A valid Quick Start account. (get free Quick Start account at http://www.icetechnology.com/developer/quickstart.jsp)
2. iPush V2 ActiveX Control API (ActiveX.zip) and extract it to a folder. (get iPush V2 ActiveX Control API from http://www.icetechnology.com/developer/download.jsp)

Note: both need you to be a member of ICE Developer Center first.

Step 1 - Check the Quick Start account approved by ICE Technology

ICE Technology will approve applicant's Quick Start application within 2 working days. The applicant will receive the approved account via e-mail with information like sample below:

Figure 1. sample of Quick Start account information

Please make sure the Expiry Date of your account is still valid. Otherwise, you have to renew or apply a new account at the Quick Start page.

Step 2 - Prepare the iPush V2 Active Control API package - ActiveX.zip

If you have not get the iPush V2 Active Control API package - ActiveX.zip, please follow the instructions below to download it. If you got it already, skip to Step 3:

(a) Open a browser window and connect to ICE Developer Center / Download / Client APIs (member login required).

(b) Download the ActiveX.zip and save it to a local folder.

Figure 2. download the API package ActiveX.zip

Step 3 - Extract ActiveX.zip and register xiPush2.ocx to your Windows machine

(a) Extract ActiveX.zip to a specified folder of your local machine, say C:\ for example.

(b) Then you can find the iPush ActiveX Control file xiPush2.ocx located in [specified folder]\ActiveX\v2.x.x, where v2.x.x represents the version number of the ActiveX Control.

(c) For register the xiPush2.ocx to your machine, open [Start] / [Run] in Windows desktop system, then execute the command:

regsvr32  [file_path]\xiPush2.ocx

Figure 3. register the xiPush2.ocx to your Windows machine

(d) A dialog will show the information as registered successfully.

Figure 4. OCX registration succeeded information

Step 4 - Start two instances of sample program to taste iPush messaging capability

(a) Open folder [specified folder]\ActiveX\Samples in Windows Explorer, double-click the sample program ActiveXSubjectSample.exe to start the first iPush client up (this will be the message receiver).

Figure 5. double-click the ActiveXSubjectSample.exe to start it up

Figure 6. initial status of ActiveXSubjectSample

(b) For connecting iPush Server, please fill in your account information to the first 6 fields of ActiveXSubjectSample

Figure 7. fill the related account information (left) to the first 6 fields of ActiveXSubjectSample (right)

(c) Click [Connect TCP] button in ActiveXSubjectSample to make it connect to iPush Server. If the connection between iPush Server and this client is built successfully, a status text Connect with TCP: Server[www.icetechnology.com], Port[8000], ...... will be displayed, just like Figure 8 shown:

Figure 8. watch out the status text

(d) Type the subject root assigned to you in Subject field (GIS_Development for example here) and click [Subscribe subject] button to subscribe to iPush Server. The status text shown in the bottom pane will inform you how's the command going.

Figure 9. subscribe the subject root assigned to you in the first iPush client

Now, this iPush client is waiting for the messages push from iPush Server with subject you subscribed.

(e) Double-click the sample program ActiveXSubjectSample.exe again to start the second iPush client up (this will be the message sender). And fill the information for connecting to iPush Server as (b) and (c) illustrated.

(f) Type the subject root assigned to you in Subject field (GIS_Development for example here).

(g) Type Hello, world! in Message field and click [Send subject msg] button to send the message to iPush Server.

Figure 10. send Hello, world! to iPush Server in the second iPush client

(h) Check out the first iPush client, it had received the Hello, world! and shown in the bottom pane with status text Subject [your_subject_root] received: (from=.......

Figure 11. the first iPush client receives Hello, world! pushed by iPush Server

Extend your experience - use more subjects, more concurrent clients

iPush supports subject name hierarchy. '.' (dot sign) is used to separate a subject into hierarchy. For example, subject "ICE" contains all subjects starting with "ICE", including "ICE.Sales", "ICE.Marketing.PR", etc. Thus, if a client subscribes to "ICE", it will receive all messages from subjects started with "ICE". The Quick Start user can use any subject extended from assigned subject root to receive or send messages.

Since ICE gives 10 concurrent connections for each Quick Start account, you can run the ActiveXSubjectSample up to 10 instances at the same time.

Enjoy iPush messaging!

Learn more

• Programming guide in each iPush API package. Get iPush API packages in ICE Developer Center / Download.

• On-the-fly "Hello world" with Eclipse, if you are a Java developer.