Understanding Environments

Environments are containers of resources, with specific options and sources, which allow users to effectively organize permissions and roles for all internal resources within Rulex Platform.

Tip

Environments have an additional permission type, called Create. Through this permission type, new resources and environments can be added within environments.

The sequence of interconnected environments that leads to a specific resource is referred to as the Environment Path. It is possible to navigate through environments, from a lower to a higher level, by clicking on the Explorer path in the Explorer.

Resources are uniquely identified by their complete path, in the same way as you would interacting with files in a standard operating system explorer. Every path starts with a leading ‘/’ and contains ‘/’ as a separator.

Danger

Due to this path management, the character ‘/’ is forbidden in both Environment and Resource names.

Procedure

To create an Environment, you need to open the Explorer (for more information refer to the corresponding page) and follow the following steps:

  1. Click the Explore resources icon to open the Explorer pane.

  2. Hover over the Plus button.

  3. Select Add new environment.

  4. Enter a unique name for your environment.

  5. Click Create: the new environment will now be added to the list.

Danger

The character ‘/’ must not be used in the names of Environments or Resources as it is already part of the path structure.

Environments Context Menu

To interact with created existing environments, right-click on them to open the Environment context menu. The menu options are applied to the selected environments, but if multiple environments are selected, not all options are available.

Note

To select more than one environment, press Ctrl or Shift button and left-click on the required environments. Selected environments will be displayed in a lighter color.

The menu options enable users to:

  • Delete: delete the selected environments (valid also for multiple selection).

  • Rename: rename the selected environment.

  • Permissions: modify environment permissions in the Permission panel. For more information see the Permissions page.

  • Environment Variables: define environment variables (only if the modify permission is allowed on the environment). For further information see page Environment variables.

  • Export Environment: export the selected environment to a selected file (only if the Share permission on the specific environment has been assigned to the user). Further information is available in the section below.

  • Paste: a list of copied or cut resources.

Environments inherit some operations and interactions from the Primary resource of the currently open component.

The following operations can be applied to a set of Primary Resources within the same environment from the Environment Context Menu.

Rulex Factory:

Creating Environments

An initial default Environment is created within Rulex Platform. Subsequently, new environments can be added, either as a top-level environment, or within an existing environment to create a folder-like structure.

Procedure

To create and Environment, open the Explorer (for more information, see the Explorer page) and perform the following operations:

  1. Click the Explore resources icon to open the Explorer pane.

  2. Hover over the Plus button.

  3. Select Add new environment.

  4. Enter a unique name for your environment.

  5. Click Create: the new environment will now be added to the list.

Importing Environments

New environments can be added, either by creating them from scratch, as explained above, or by importing environments that were previously exported from other projects.

Along with the Environment itself, its resources and variables will also be imported.

Note

The file to import must have been previously exported in a Rulex Environment format (.renv).

Prerequisites

  • you must have browsed to the environment which will contain the imported environment.

  • the Create permission for the environment where you will perform the import operation must have been assigned to you.

  • the environment you want to import must be in .renv format.

Procedure

  1. Open the Explorer.

  2. Hover over the Plus icon and click on the Import Environment icon.

  3. Select the Source type (Saved or Custom) and insert the filesystem configuration, if you have selected the Custom mode.

  4. Choose the .renv files to be imported by clicking the Select button in the Path 1 section.

  5. If you want to import more than one environment at the same time:

    • Click on the Add new path button, located next to the Select button.

    • Select the file you want to import. If you want to import a folder, click on the folder icon before clicking on the Select button. If you choose to import a folder, all the environments within it will be imported.

    • Click on the X button, located next to the Select button, to cancel the corresponding path. Alternatively, click on the Delete all paths button, located under the Add new path button, to cancel all the inserted paths.

    Imported environment names will be automatically deduced from their file names, automatically maintaining unique resource names.

  6. Click on Import to complete the import operation or on Cancel to close the Import Environment panel without importing environments.

Exporting Environments

If you want to save a copy of your Environment to send it to other users or to store it, you can export an entire environment from the Environment Context Menu.

This exported file can then be imported on any machine where Rulex Platform is installed.

Prerequisites

  • you must have browsed to the environment where the environments you want to export are located.

  • the Share permissions for the environment you want to export must have been assigned to you.

Warning

The exported .renv files will contain all the resources within it for which the user performing the export operation has Share permissions.

Procedure

  1. Open the Explorer.

  2. Right-click the environment you want to export, and select Export Environment.

  3. Select the Source type (Saved or Custom) and insert the filesystem configuration details, if you have selected the Custom mode.

  4. Select the folder where you want to save the exported environment file.

  5. If you are exporting a single resource, enter the required name for output file in the Insert desired resource name text box.

  6. To add the timestamp of the operation as a prefix or suffix to the file name, select one the following checkboxes:

    • Add current date and time as prefix

    • Add current date and time as suffix

    This may be necessary to guarantee a unique file name (otherwise any previously exported environments with the same name could be overwritten).

  7. Click Export. When the progress bar reaches 100%, your exported environment will be saved in the specified location.