Perforce Software
How to Use P4Web

Note: Please read the Release Notes.

How P4Web Works · How to Install P4Web · How to Start P4Web · The 'p4web' Command
Connecting to P4Web · How to Stop P4Web · User Documentation

How P4Web Works

P4Web is Perforce client program that runs on any platform. It can be used either in Standard mode or Viewer mode:

P4Web 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 browser, P4Web looks very much like a web server. To a Perforce server, P4Web looks like any other Perforce client program.

How to Install P4Web

P4Web is available for Macintosh, Windows, and Unix. For download information, please go to the Perforce Downloads page.

How to Start P4Web

Before you can point your browser to it, the P4Web program must be up and running.

On Windows, you can start the P4Web you configured during installation by clicking Start>Programs>Perforce>P4Web. You can also start a P4Web with an alternate configuration using the p4web command, as described below. Run p4web in the Start>Run window or with the p4web command in a Command Prompt window.

If you are running P4Web as a service on Windows, P4Web is already running as soon as you install it. To verify that it has started, go to the Windows Control Panel. Under Administrative Tools>Component Services, click on Services and find Perforce Web. If it is not started, click Start the service in the left-hand column.

On Mac OSX and Unix, start the P4Web program with p4web command, as described below.

The 'p4web' Command

From a command shell, run the p4web command to start a P4Web program . When P4Web starts up, it displays information about the Perforce user, client, and server port it's using, and the URL your browser should use to connect to it. The p4web command syntax is:

p4web [-w port] [-b or -B] [-l] [global_options] [-h] [-V]

Connecting to P4Web

Once you've started a P4Web, you can connect to it with your Web browser. Point your browser to:

http://localhost:nnnn/   (where nnnn is your P4Web's port address.)
The port address is set in the environment variable P4PORT, unless you are running P4Web as a service on Windows. If you are running P4Web as a service, the port address is set in the environment variable P4WEBPORT.

Note: If your browser is running on a different machine than P4Web, use the name of the machine P4Web is running on instead of "localhost".

Enter your Perforce username and password at your browser's prompt to begin using P4Web.

How to Stop P4Web

To stop a P4Web program running on...

User Documentation

Once you've pointed your browser to P4Web you can use its Help links to access P4Web user documentation. You can also access the same documentation on our web site via these links:


Copyright 2005 Perforce Software. All rights reserved.
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