Article
· May 7, 2020 4m read
Unit Testing with ZPM

Hi Developers!

I want to share with you the approach you can use working with Unit Testing which I personally find very convenient and robust.

Will not talk much here about Unit Testing, we have documentation, enough good articles on the topic not only on the Internet but here on Developers Community too, e.g. this one.

How can you manage the Unit Testing of your ZPM module?

This is pretty handy with ZPM. It has a special command "test" which runs all the tests you mentioned in the module. You can execute it as shown below:

zpm:USER>module-name test

And this command runs all the tests you mentioned in module.xml.

Let's see how it works.

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Hi colleagues!

Every day Johns Hopkins University publishes new data on coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic status.

I built a simple InterSystems IRIS Analytics dashboard using InterSystems IRIS Community Edition in docker deployed on GCP Kubernetes which shows key measures of the disease outbreak.

This dashboard is an example of how information from CSV could be analyzed with IRIS Analytics and deployed to GCP Kubernetes in a form of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition.

Added the interactive map of the USA:

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Hi Developers!

Another way to start using InterSystems ObjectScript Package Manager is to use prebuilt container images of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition and InterSystems IRIS for Health Community Edition.

We deploy this IRIS images on DockerHub and you can run it with the following command:

docker run --rm -p 52773:52773 --init --name my-iris -d intersystemsdc/iris-community:2019.4.0.383.0-zpm

Launch a terminal with:

docker exec -it my-iris iris session IRIS

And install zpm-module as:

USER>zpm 

zpm: USER>install objectscript-math

[objectscript-math] Reload START

[objectscript-math] Reload SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Module object refreshed.

[objectscript-math] Validate START

[objectscript-math] Validate SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Compile START

[objectscript-math] Compile SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Activate START

[objectscript-math] Configure START

[objectscript-math] Configure SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Activate SUCCESS

zpm: USER>

And use same commands for InterSystems IRIS for Health using the tag: intersystemsdc/irishealth-community:2019.4.0.383.0-zpm

The images are being published on IRIS Community Edition and IRIS Community Edition for Health repositories of Docker Hub.

We will update tags with every new release of IRIS and ZPM.

Happy coding!

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Hi Developers!

As you know the concept of ObjectScript Package Manager consists of ZPM client - client application for IRIS which helps you to install packages from the registry. And the code which works "on the other side" is ZPM Registry - server which hosts packages and exposes API to submit, list and install it. Now when you install the ZPM client it installs packages from community package registry, which si hosted on pm.community.intersystems.com

But what if you want your own registry? E.g. you produce different software packages for your clients and you want to distribute it via private registry? Also, you may want to use your own registry to deploy solutions with different combinations of packages.

Is it possible? The answer is YES! You can have it if you deploy ZPM registry on your server with InterSystems IRIS.

To make it happen you would need to set up your own registry server.

How to do that?

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Hi Developers!

Recently we released the updated version 0.1.3 of ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) which comes with the support of simplified ObjectScript sources folder structure.

What 'simplified' does mean?

Before 0.1.3 ZPM expected the following structure:

/src

---/cls  - for ObjectScript classes

---/cls/package_name/class_name.cls

---/cls/package_name/class_name2.cls

---/mac - or Mac ObjectScript routines

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine.mac

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine2.mac

---/inc - for ObjectScript macro include files.

---/inc/package_name/include_file.inc

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Hi Developers!

Many of you are looking for samples on how to work with InterSystems IRIS Analytics, formerly known as DeepSee.

There is a Samples BI module with Patients and Holefoods examples which is available on Github with source code. The installation steps are clear but take time.

Recently we added the option to run IRIS Community Edition containers with ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) on board. This simplifies the installation to the "run-one-command" step for the modules submitted to ZPM Community Registry. And thus we can benefit the Samples BI installation with ZPM.

And here is how you can run it on your laptop. Let's go!

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Hi Developers!

Recently we published on Docker Hub images for InterSystems IRIS Community Edition and InterSystems IRIS Community for Health containers.

What is that?

There is a repository that publishes it, and in fact, it is the same container IRIS Community Edition containers you have on official InterSystems listing which have the pre-loaded ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) client.

So if you run this container with IRIS CE or IRIC CE for Health you can immediately start using ZPM and install packages from Community Registry or any others.

What does this mean for you?

It means, that anyone can deploy any of your InterSystems ObjectScript application in 3 commands:

  • run IRIS container;
  • open terminal;
  • install your application as ZPM package.

It is safe, fast and cross-platform.

It's really handy if you want to test a new interesting ZPM package and not harm any of your systems.

Suppose, you have docker-desktop installed. You can run the image, which wiil pull the latest container if you don't have it locally:

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Hi Developers!

Often when we install a code package we want to make some post-install settings, e.g. call to a method, set up a configuration file.

This article describes how to do this with the ObjectScript Package Manager.

To make any post-install calls you need to add <Invoke> elements into <Invokes> tag to the module.xml. Each <Invoke> element can have nested <Arg> elements if you want to pass params to the method:

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Have you ever needed a math function but could not find what you needed and ended up writing your own? Look no further! ObjectScript-Math is here to solve all your math related function needs.

ObjectScript-Math is an Open Source library for ObjectScript Math functions. It is now available on Open Exchange. This library contains a mix of new functions that are not currently available and functions that are available. The existing functions will be wrapped for use from ObjectScript-Math so that all Math functions can have a central location.

This library will continue to grow, so give it a try and give your feedback!

Don't see what you are looking for? Please feel free to submit requests for additional functions or contribute code yourself!

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Hi Developers!

As discussed in previous parts of Package Manager stories to turn your IRIS application into a deployable package you just need to introduce the module.xml file into the root folder of the repository and describe all the resources.

I’m pleased to introduce you to a new project template on Open Exchange which contains examples of how to make different types of resources of your InterSystems IRIS application a part of the ObjectScript package and so make the deployable ObjectSctipt package.

Let's see how you can describe your application resources using this template project as an example.

See the details below.

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Hi Developers!

When you prepare your modules for ZPM (InterSystems Package Manager) it expects the certain directory structure for ObjectScript source files.

ObjectScript in your source folder need to be stored by types in the following subfolders. E.g. if you have the source folder named as /src the structure should be as follows:

/src

/cls - for classes

/inc - for include files

/mac - for mac files

/int - for interpretable files

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Hi Developers!

Recently we launched InterSystems Package Manager - ZPM. And one of the intentions of the ZPM is to let you package your solution and submit into the ZPM registry to make its deployment as simple as "install your-package" command.

To do that you need to introduce module.xml file into your repository which describes what is your InterSystems IRIS package consists of.

This article describes different parts of module.xml and will help you to craft your own.

I will start from samples-objectscript package, which installs into IRIS the Sample ObjectScript application and could be installed with:

zpm: USER>install samples-objectscript

It is probably the simplest package ever and here is the module.xml which describes the package:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Export generator="Cache" version="25">
  <Document name="samples-objectscript.ZPM">
    <Module>
      <Name>samples-objectscript</Name>
      <Version>1.0.0</Version>
      <Packaging>module</Packaging>
      <SourcesRoot>src</SourcesRoot>
      <Resource Name="ObjectScript.PKG"/>
    </Module>
  </Document>
</Export>

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Hi Developers!

InterSystems Package Manager (ZPM) is a great thing, but it is even better if you don't need to install it but can use immediately.

There are several ways how to do this and here is one approach of having IRIS container with ZPM built with dockerfile.

I've prepared a repository which has a few lines in dockerfile which perform the download and install the latest version of ZPM.

Add these lines to your standard dockerfile for IRIS community edition and you will have ZPM installed and ready to use.

To download the latest ZPM client:

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