TAUS Translation API Test Implementation

Instructions

Installing Node.js

If you already have Node.js installed on your computer, then skip this section and move to section 1.2.

Node.js® is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications.

OS X

To install Node.js on mac os, visit http://nodejs.org/ and click install. This will download a pre-compiled binary package to your computer node-vx.xx.xx.pkg. Once the download is complete open the .pkg file which will open a installer that is quite similar to all the installation wizards available for mac. Follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation.

Windows

To install Node.js on windows os, visit http://nodejs.org/ and click Install. You will be prompted to download an .msi file that contains the installer. Save the .msi file to a location on your drive and launch the installer by double-clicking on it. Follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation.

Testing the installation

To test if Node.js is installed on your computer, Open command prompt --> type node if you don't see any errors on the screen and see this > on the screen, then you have succesfully installed Node.js. To exit the Node.js prompt press Ctrl+C twice.

Installing Node packages

To quickly install node packages,

Open command prompt --> navigate to the /server folder and type: npm install

npm will now install the dependencies into a node_modules folder in the project.

As with all of our node projects, the packages required by the translation API is defined in package.json.

// package.json
{
    "name": "taus-api",
    "main": "tausapiserver.js",
    "dependencies": {
        "express": "~3.0.0",
        "js2xmlparser": "~0.1.5"
    }
}

What do these packages do? express is the Node framework and js2xmlparser is a Node.js module that parses JavaScript objects into XML.

Possible Windows installation issue

On Windows you might get the following error message when installing the packages:

npm install
Error: ENOENT, stat 'C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\npm'

In this case you will have to create the npm folder manually and re-run the package installation.

Starting the server

To start the server, Type in command prompt: node tausapiserver.js

You might be prompted to open access to the server by the firewall built into your operating system.

Port number in use on Unix-based operating systems

If you see the below error in the command prompt after trying to start the server,

Error: listen EADDRINUSE
    at errnoException (net.js:904:11)
    at Server._listen2 (net.js:1042:14)
    at listen (net.js:1064:10)
    at Server.listen (net.js:1138:5)

then the port number specified in the translation api server is already in use.

Quick fix Type in terminal: killall -9 node

Now start the server again!

Accessing the server

You can access the server in your browser at http://localhost:3412/v2.0/translation/ (the terminiating slash is significant!).

For full access to the RESTful API use a REST client (some are available as browser plug-ins) and refer to the TAUS Translation API v2.0 Specification for available methods.

GALAglobal / translationapi

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