# Introduction to Autoplot

Autoplot is an interactive browser for data on the web. Give it a URL or a
name of a file on your computer and it tries to create a sensible plot. It was
developed to allow quick and interactive browsing of data and metadata.
Autoplot works with more abstract data sources as well, like the CDAWeb at 
NASA/Goddard.  In this case a compact URI is provided, that refers to data.
These URIs (and URLs) can be pasted into emails for easy collaboration with 
collegues.

See http://autoplot.org

# Building Autoplot 

The svn for Autoplot is https://svn.code.sf.net/p/autoplot/code/autoplot/
trunk.  (Tagged versions are in https://svn.code.sf.net/p/autoplot/code/
autoplot/trunk, but these are not done often and the head is typically what 
people are using, see http://autoplot.org/jnlp/ for release dates and perform 
checkouts based on these times.)

Check out the sources with Netbeans or some other svn client.

There are a number Netbeans projects that can be built with ant.  They are:
* Autoplot -- Autoplot gui and application model
* CDFDataSource -- support for CDF.
* JythonDataSource -- dataset mashups using python code.
* WavDataSource -- the result of the wav tutorial
* DataSourcePack -- a number of data sources, including NetCDF, excel, and ascii tables.
* DataSource -- data source plugin interface and utilities
* QDataSet -- the data model
* dasCore -- graphics and GUI
* APLibs -- an empty project with no sources, but all the libraries needed are in libs.

The "src" directory of each of these folders contains the Java source code.  Together these should show nicely what's going on under the hood.  

To get a copy of the source code, you need to get Autoplot from SourceForge and
das2 from GitHub.

~~~~~
svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/autoplot/code/autoplot/trunk autoplot
cd autoplot
git clone  git@github.com:das-developers/das2java.git
cd ../../autoplot
~~~~~

To build using ant, change into the Autoplot project, and run: "ant jar".  The default target will compile all sub projects, and the resulting jar files will be in dist.
~~~~~
cd Autoplot
ant jar
~~~~~

To use the projects in Netbeans (8.1 or later), do the check out from within Netbeans and it should discover the projects after check out.  Then build Autoplot.

Autoplot will soon move to GitHub as well, and this should simplify the process.

= Building Autoplot Servlet =
A simple servlet is found in the repository at https://svn.code.sf.net/p/autoplot/code/autoplot/trunk/AutoplotServlet.  This shows how Autoplot can be used to create graphics on the server-side, when used with a J2EE container like Apache Tomcat.

* Check out Autoplot sources as described above.
* The location of a server's classpath must be specified.  Locate a J2EE instance, such as Tomcat.
* change directory to the location of the ant build script, build.xml.
* Use ant to compile the servlet, using (where the classpath is set to your server location):
~~~~~
  ant -Dj2ee.platform.classpath=/usr/local/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.16/lib/servlet-api.jar dist
~~~~~
* The war file will be found in the "dist" folder.