Install Perl & Command Line Interface

The ExtraView Command Line Interface is an optional component that requires the Perl interpreter to be installed first. Check the software requirements page for the recommended version of Perl for your computer system.

Assuming you are installing Strawberry Perl, it is a three-step process to install the CLI.

  1. Download and Install Perl with Required Modules

    Download the appropriate version of Perl for your computer system (see www.perl.org). Assuming you are installing Strawberry Perl, it is downloaded in a file named similarly to strawberry-perl-5.12.3.0.msi. Click on the file and install by following the instructions. When asked to select an install folder, enter C:\ExtraView\Perl, or another convenient location on your client computer from which you will run the CLI.

    With the downloaded Perl modules, install each of these in turn by using the cpan command that comes with your Perl installation. For example, use cpan Mail::Sendmail to install the Sendmail module. The install process should be repeated for each of these files:

    Mail::Sendmail
    Mail::POP3Client
    Mail::Sender
    MIME::Parser
    HTML::FormatText
  2. Download and Install the CLI

    Download the CLI from the ExtraView Support site download page. The download file is named evcli_win.zip.

    If you are upgrading, you may have a directory named evapi or evcli. The new package will have a version-specific name. For the upgrade, simply copy the configuration file from your existing directory to the new directory created during the CLI installation, and start using the new version of the CLI commands.

    Extract the files contained in the download file using an archive program, such as WinZip, into a separate directory for the CLI commands. For example, extract the CLI files in the following directory:

    C:\ExtraView\evjNNN_evcli

    Next, build the batch scripts for the CLI commands by executing the following commands with the paths appropriate for your system in a Command Prompt window:

    cd C:\ExtraView\evjNNN_evcli
    C:\ExtraView\Perl\bin\perl mkbat.pl -p "C:\ExtraView\Perl\bin\perl"

    Next, edit the file evconfig.txt with a text editor, such as Notepad, to configure the CLI to connect to your ExtraView server. Set the SERVER setting to the URL of your ExtraView server. For example:

    SERVER = extraview.yourdomain.com/evj/ExtraView

  3. Test your Installation

    Once the installation process completes successfully, run the perl command with the -v option in a Command Prompt window to make sure that the Perl interpreter can run. For example:
    C:\ExtraView\Perl\bin\perl -v
    The command should print some information about the version and license of the Perl interpreter installed. If the command does not run successfully, make sure that you are using the correct path to the perl executable file (i.e., perl.exe).

    Lastly, test the CLI to make sure that it works and can communicate with the ExtraView server by executing the following commands in a Command Prompt window:

    cd C:\ExtraView\evjNNN_evcli\bat
    evcheck

    The evcheck CLI command will prompt you for a username and password and then attempt to access the ExtraView server with your credentials. The command prints information about the server, version, and other settings. For example:

      config file: C:\ExtraView\evjNNN_evcli\evconfig.txt
           server: http://extraview.yourdomain.com/evj/ExtraView/ev_api.action
    evapi version: Release 7.0.2 Build 65
          modtime: 12/31/2011 05:10 PM
             user: username - from command line
        delimiter: :