Nexxus stock keeping is a webapplication made for purchase, sale and keeping of any stock. The application is built upon most popular technologies, such as PHP, Symfony, MySQL, jQuery and Bootstrap. This repository holds version 2 of Nexxus, which is made open source under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3).
My name is Mardten de Bakker and I am owner of Copiatek. Copiatek refurbishes and recycles used computer hardware and uses Nexxus for its own daily workflow. It started when I was manager in a thrift store and I wanted to sell used computers. There was no way to keep track of the computers and to know in what state they were in. Since we operated multiple stores, I also needed to keep track of the computers at several locations and which ones were sold.
The software evolved and it became possible to also keep track of other objects besides computers. Also a billing part was introduced so we could use it as a point of sales. Since we picked up objects through the country, I needed a way to keep track of logistics and distribution. Most of the whishes have been implemented, however it was build on a shady foundation. Last year we decided to start developing from the ground up. This repository tracks the development of the second version of Nexxus Stock Keeping.
The following technologies should be present in order to install and use Nexxus.
- Web server like Apache on Linux (Tested with Apache 2.4.7 and Ubuntu Linux 14.04.4)
- PHP 7 with regular extensions (tested with 7.0.32)
- MySQL 5.6 (Tested with 5.6.33-0ubuntu0.14.04.1)
- Composer (dependency manager for PHP)
- Git
Nexxus is tested with these versions. Higher versions of PHP could give undesirable results.
In order to install Nexxus, you need to open a Windows command prompt, Linux terminal or SSH connection (like with Putty). Some steps below might require more user rights, ie. when you get permission denied errors. In that case prepend the command with the sudo command. We advise not to install the Nexxus application using the root user.
If this manual is too brief for you, more than enough information can be found on the internet, as these steps are very regular for a Symfony 3 application.
For installation follow these steps:
In the terminal, go to the right place where you would like to install Nexxus. Typically this is one directory above the public_html or wwwroot folder. Never install Nexxus inside the public web folder! Like 90% of the source code of a webapplication like this is not in the public web folder. Step 3 of this installation manual will make a certain part of the application available for public.
To clone the source code, run:
git clone https://github.com/Nexxus/NSK.git nexxus
This will download all source code and place it in a newly created folder named nexxus. Go to the new folder when the download has finished:
cd nexxus
All next steps will happen in this new folder.
When using Linux, make sure the application can modify the var folder:
chmod -R 777 var
Now you have your clean clone of Nexxus.
If you need a production web server like Apache, the public web folder is at a designated location, in which you (fortunately) did not install Nexxus. To make Nexxus publically accessible, move the web folder of the installation to the public web folder of your server. The public web folder is typically named public_html or wwwroot. This is an example how it can be achieved:
mkdir ../public_html/nsk
mv web/* web/.* ../public_html/nsk
Don't copy this line literally, but apply it to the situation of your web server. In this example, Nexxus will be available on URL http://www.yourdomain.com/nsk
When you would get an error about device or resource being busy, there is no problem. Just execute this extra command:
rm -rf web
In composer.json you should add or change the value for field symfony-web-dir. The file is in the current directory. You can change this file with a text editor like Nano. The line to change is somewhere at the bottom in the node named extra. In this example, the value should be changed from web to ../public_html/nsk.
Nexxus depends on other PHP packages. To install these, run:
composer install
This will take a while...
After installation, some parameters will be asked. You can enter thru most of them. The database does not need to exist yet, but the database user does need to exist. For database_user and database_password you need to enter the appropiate values. For the secret enter a random value of your liking. These parameters can be edited later in file ./app/config/parameters.yml.
To create a database with all needed tables, run:
php bin/console doctrine:database:create
php bin/console doctrine:schema:create
To get you started, make the first user in the terminal
php bin/console fos:user:create superadmin superadmin@whatever.com p@ssw0rd
php bin/console fos:user:promote superadmin ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN
Don't copy these line literally, but change the name, email and password to your likings. Take care of choosing a good password.
Now you can login and create other users in the Admin section.
Finally make sure the application root can find the source code from its new location. This happens in a different folder:
cd ../public_html/nsk
You are now in the public root. Open app.php in a text editor and change lines 6 and 7 like so:
$loader = require __DIR__.'/../../nexxus/app/autoload.php';
include_once __DIR__.'/../../nexxus/var/bootstrap.php.cache';
Finally, if you are installing an production environment, remove app_dev.php. In Linux:
rm app_dev.php
Please check if the commands are appropiate for your specific situation. For example, you might have installed the application in different folders then nexxus and nsk.
Congratulations, Nexxus is now ready for use. To start with, go to the Admin section and configure all meta data: Users, Locations, Product types, Attributes, Product statuses, Order statuses, Tasks. Without this meta data the application will not behave as desired.
When your first visit to Nexxus gives an error 500, our first guess is that the write rights to the var folder is not accurate. You could try to repeat this command from the application folder:
chmod -R 777 var
For more information, for example about upgrading installations or the API reference, go to the Wiki.