To install and run your own instance of CorA on a server, you need:

  • A web server, such as Apache
  • PHP 5.3 or newer, with the following extensions:
    • dom
    • json
    • libxml
  • MySQL 5.5 or newer

The easy way

The easy (and recommended) way to install CorA is to simply download a prepared build. Extract the contents of the archive to a local directory, then perform the following steps:

  1. Copy the contents of the www/ subdirectory to your web server directory.

  2. Open your web browser and navigate to <cora>/db/configure_db.php, where <cora> is the URL of your web server directory. If your web server is set up correctly, this page will guide you through the database installation. (Alternatively, you can use the command-line script <cora>/db/configure_db_cli.php. Call it with -h to see the available options.)

  3. If the database installation succeeded, you can now login to your CorA instance. On a first-time installation, use the username “admin” with password “admin” to login, but make sure to change this password when you login for the first time.

You can follow the same process when updating to a newer version of CorA. Copying the files from an archive will not reset any configuration options you’ve set, and the db/configure_db.php page is capable of upgrading your database to a newer version, if needed.

Danger

You should make absolutely sure that no-one except you can access the db/ subdirectory. Anyone with access to this directory can potentially execute arbitrary commands on your server! We recommend setting very restrictive access permissions in your web server while you install CorA, and deleting the db/ directory afterwards since it is no longer needed.

The hard way

If you’d like to modify any part of the CorA source code, run the unit tests, or build the API documentation, you need to setup CorA’s build chain on your machine. CorA uses CMake and a variety of other external tools for this purpose. First, clone the git repository on your local machine, then follow the instructions in the INSTALL.md file.