


I have talked this with ClientCare (ping Navdeep Pandey), but we decided to wrote public forum post and bit pressure for product management to react to this one. There was also some discussions about this in Measure Slack. Anyway, would be great to get this information to forum too.
If you want to choose self-hosted files in Adobe Launch you need to download scripts in zip file. There are normal and minified versions available. After unzipping you get e.g. minified files:
(I modified folder/files, but you get the idea)
launch-EN2a37something-development.min.js
xxxxx/subfolder/launch-EN2a37something-development.min.js
xxxxx/subfolder/subfolder2/launch-EN2a37something-development.min.js
xxxxx/subfolder/subfolder2/EXed123456789de2d-libraryCode_source.min.js
xxxxx/subfolder/subfolder2/hostedLibFiles/EP971123456789xxxxxxx/AppMeasurement.min.js
My questions:
1. Why is there same file 3 different times on different folders? And if I see browser only using one of those could I then delete other files or should I keep those always on our server?
2. Is there plans to simplify this? My wish is to have only 1 file and maybe I need to wait this https://medium.com/adobetech/simplifying-customer-workflows-with-adobe-experience-platform-web-sdk-4... ?
3. Before we get things to simplified format, could there be detailed information available what these different files really contain and do you need to update every single one after making updates in Launch? For example, maybe you don't need the last AppMeasurement file at all if you have code in custom code etc?
Now you have to manually upload and do different kind of security tests for 5 different files and this takes too so much time compared to only 1 file (or max 3 files).
I already noticed that these folder and script names are nowadays shorter, because windows had some problems to unzip too long folder structure. Good!
I would also hope that unzipping the file would result into 2 different zip files containing minified version in separate file. Now you have to be very careful that you only upload minified version and not the other one.
thebenrobb
Employee
thebenrobb
Employee
23-09-2019
thomas_amsler
thomas_amsler
25-09-2019
I still would root for an additional flat zip option, where all files are directly part of the zip without subfolders as they are only relevant for CDN and not self hostet.
Antti_Ko
Antti_Ko
05-10-2019
I marked my initial questions as answered.
Now we have bit more understanding about this and hopefully we get official and detailed help documentations around this topic in the near future. I also found similar discussion thread in here https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2603462 and Launch self-hosting: Why are there duplicate files? if you want to learn more.
Also new idea post around this topic as Urs already mentioned: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/11195
And long path names have been already fixed, great!
Thanks Urs and others for great ideas to modify scripts and paths. In some ways, it is risky to change default ways or at least that might confuse new analytics people when trying to understand how measurement is built on your site. Yes, you can and should always do documentation and it helps. Anyway, hopefully Adobe will develop this to better direction and something like this https://medium.com/adobetech/simplifying-customer-workflows-with-adobe-experience-platform-web-sdk-4...
sounds interesting too.
ursboller
MVP
ursboller
MVP
04-10-2019
I upvoted an existing idea: Simplify archive (zip) folder structure
ursboller
MVP
ursboller
MVP
04-10-2019
thebenrobb I strongly support the idea of thomas.amsler to have a flat folder structure for zip file contents. and I don't think there is a lot to change, but might be wrong.
In fact, I think you just need to skip a bunch of folders and directly include the "ExtensionFolders" directly below the main file. so basically all the "libPath" could be something like "{myLocalPath}/EPXXX"
the desired final structure would look something like this:
{myLocalPath}
|- launch-ENXXXX.min.js
|- EPXXXX1 (folder for extension files 1)
|- EPXXXX2 (folder for extension files 2)
And since all the extension files are similar in all properties, you could take it even a step further: define a "globalSharedLibrary". just giving you an idea what I'm doing right now on our prod environment: when downloading the zip file I replace the "relative path beginning" of the extension files by a global "sharedLibPath". that means I have a shared library for all extension files which can be used by all properties. so my local folder structure looks something like this:
{localPath}
|- Property1
|- launch-ENXXXX1.min.js
|- Property2
|- launch-ENXXXX2.min.js
|- sharedLibs
|- EPXXXX1 (folder for extension files 1)
|- EPXXXX2 (folder for extension files 2)
the advantage for the "shared library" is a simpler update process: if you do not upgrade any extensions, there is just one file to be replace on prod (the min.js file). all extension files remain unchanged...
and the benefit for the end user? if someone moves between different properties, only the main file needs to be loaded, all shared lib files can be fetched from client cache (remark: caching for the shared libs could be even set to 1 year since upgrade of extensions would result to a new include file/folder)
I would hope to see an option for this "shared library" in the future - it would make update process for local deployment so much easier.
thebenrobb
Employee
thebenrobb
Employee
26-09-2019
If this is something that you want, I'd suggest logging an idea for the enhancement, and then lobbying the community members to vote for it. To be completely transparent, we probably wouldn't take it on without a bunch of community support for a couple reasons:
thebenrobb
Employee
thebenrobb
Employee
04-10-2019
This is good info, thanks 😃
I'd reiterate that somebody should post this as an idea and collect votes.
Antti_Ko
Antti_Ko
04-10-2019
Ok, thanks for the details and hopefully we get the documentation in the near future.