How to Use P4Web -- Perforce Software

Perforce Software
How to Use P4Web

Note: This is a beta test version. For more information, please read the Release Notes.

How P4Web Works · How to Start P4Web · Navigating P4Web Pages · Help Page Directory

How P4Web Works

P4Web is a portable, self-contained Perforce client program that runs as a background process on your workstation. It reads and writes files in your client workspace, and communicates with the Perforce server using the Perforce C++ API. It also communicates with your web browser, sending HTML and receiving URL requests and form input. To your web browsers, P4Web looks like a web server. To a Perforce server, P4Web looks like a Perforce client program.

How to Start P4Web

(Macintosh users, please see the Release Notes.)

P4Web is available as ready-to-run executables for Unix and Windows NT on our Beta Downloads page. To start your personal P4Web, run this command on the machine where your client workspace is:

   p4web [flags] nnnn

where:

flags are the standard Perforce client usage flags that indicate your server port, client name, etc. Run "p4web -h" to see a list of available flags. (If these parameters are already configured in your environment, you don't need to use flags on the P4Web command.)

nnnn is a TCP/IP port address you assign to this P4Web process.
This port address must be unique to your P4Web process, and must not be in use by any other application on the machine where your P4Web is running. (If you are testing on Unix, where several users could be running P4Web at once, establish a convention for picking a port address. For example, users could use their personal phone extensions as P4Web port numbers.)

Once you've done this you can point your browser to "http://localhost:nnnn/", where nnnn is P4Web's port address. (If your browser is running on a different machine than P4Web, use the P4Web machine name instead of "localhost".) Enter your Perforce username and password at your browser's prompt to begin using P4Web.

(Please read about "Passwords and Authentication" in the Release Notes.)

Navigating P4Web Pages

Every P4Web page displays a "console" at the top. Use the console's selection menus to run commands, change what's shown on the page, and go to different P4Web pages. Some menu items aren't supported in this beta release.

The console offers a number of shortcuts, each with its own button. On browsers that support ALT tags, you can mouse over the buttons to find out what they do.

On some P4Web pages, the console displays a "recent activity" bar. This shows the most recent changelists submitted to the path or file you are currently browsing.

The Path Browser

When you first navigate to your P4Web's URL, you'll be in P4Web's Path Browser page. The Path Browser allows to work with the set of files in the current path. You can navigate up and down directory path levels using the Path Browser.

From the Path Browser you can also navigate to the File Browser. This page shows detailed information about a particular file, and allows you to run commands on the individual file.

Help Pages

You'll find a Help button on every P4Web page (except for the Help pages themselves). The Help pages can also be browsed from these links: