I'm used to using python's virtualenv tool to create separate environments that can mimic deployment environments for projects I write.
Now, I'm going to be working on a php project and I'm wondering if there's any equivalent to that? Specifically I'm hoping to be able to run one virtualhost on apache with one (older) version of php, while everything else runs on the normal up to date version.
My development machine is running ubuntu 11.04, so solutions that work on that platform would be preferred.
Assuming that you are using mod_php, there is no way to load multiple different versions into the same Apache instance. You can run multiple different versions if you're running PHP as CGI or FastCGI, but this will itself introduce some differences in behavior from mod_php.
Another alternative to virtual machines is docker.
As loading different versions of php within apache with mod_php seems not to be posible, the easiest way of mimicking deployment and development setups will be with a virtualmachine, which you stated you would like to avoid.
One way of making the burden of vm's for developers a bit easier is to use something like vagrant. With two files (the vagrant file, and the chef/puppet file) you can "version" your vm's, easily create them and destroy them for each project and when needed.
virtPHP is a tool for creating and managing multiple isolated PHP environments on a single machine. It's like Python's virtualenv, but for PHP. (README)
https://github.com/virtphp/virtphp
You might be interested in this: https://github.com/phpenv/phpenv
(Haven't coded php in years, so this might be outdated)
As far as I remember you just had to point to another directory where your libraries reside (include PATH), using something like:
include_path = .:/usr/local/lib/php:./include (this goes in php.ini, default libararies)
and in your php files:
ini_set("include_path", ".:../:./include:../include");
PHP never really had a robust packaging system and library repository like perl/python/ruby has, PEAR was trying to move in that direction but it is very closed in comparison and was hard to configure in multiproject environments.
Phark is trying to build a brew/bundler port for php, https://github.com/lox/phark, although it's not deployment ready.
As of now, there is no out of the box solution to this problem. The only solution which comes close is Vagrant and puPHPet.com as discussed here: https://drupal.org/node/2055947
Why can't we have an environment like python's virtualenv or ruby's rbenv? It makes up a nice open source project. Multiple instances of PHP can be handy if we want to test out some libraries in sandboxes rather than globally. We can install dependencies for different projects using a package manager like Composer.
Cloudlinux with PHP Selector has this for ages. It is integrated with popular control panels like CPanel, DirectAdmin etc.
Each linux account can have its own version of php and select any extensions they sit fit.
https://www.cloudlinux.com/php-selector
Related
perlbrew is a tool to manage multiple installations of Perl on your system, making it easy to, say, quickly run a suite of test scripts against many different versions of Perl.
Is there anything like that for PHP? For now when I want to change the version of PHP that my system uses, I'll go into the build directory for my desired version and run make install.
Here's one: http://www.navicopa.com - it allows you to switch between different versions of php in one click (just install them into different directories)
And here's a free one: https://github.com/c9s/phpbrew
Also - you might like this solution as an alternative, if you don't want to use side software: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5299385/1337343
Also missed that you use linux environment, so you would really like this: https://github.com/tobiasgies/php-switch
Install all php versions you need and switch between them using this tiny bash script.
Maybe phpfarm could help you...
When you run ./configure, add --prefix=/usr/local/php-{version} (replacing {version} with the php version). Then to run a script with a certain version:
/usr/local/php-{version}/bin/php script.php
To run under a CGI environment
Make a symlink from /usr/local/bin/php-cgi to /usr/local/php-{version}/bin/php-cgi and then remake the symlink and restart the server when you want to switch php versions.
Maybe light offtopic, but for local development under windows some WAMP stacks provide excellent one-click switching of php versions. i had positive experiences with:
http://www.wampserver.com
http://www.uniformserver.com
Not sure whether this is all clear for you, but let me know if it's not :)
cli
For simple cli testing you can just install each version into their own folders, e.g. /usr/local/php-5.4/bin, /usr/local/php-5.3.10/bin, etc.
fastcgi
For some time you can run PHP in FastCGI mode. You can let a few versions run simultaneously and bind them to different ports, e.g. :9000, :9001, :9002, etc.
The next step is to set up multiple name based virtual hosts in either Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd or Node.js. Each virtual host binds to another FastCGI process and therefore uses a different version of PHP.
Maybe this is overkill for what you need, but if you don't mind using virtual machines Vagrant may be helpful.
I'm used to using python's virtualenv tool to create separate environments that can mimic deployment environments for projects I write.
Now, I'm going to be working on a php project and I'm wondering if there's any equivalent to that? Specifically I'm hoping to be able to run one virtualhost on apache with one (older) version of php, while everything else runs on the normal up to date version.
My development machine is running ubuntu 11.04, so solutions that work on that platform would be preferred.
Assuming that you are using mod_php, there is no way to load multiple different versions into the same Apache instance. You can run multiple different versions if you're running PHP as CGI or FastCGI, but this will itself introduce some differences in behavior from mod_php.
Another alternative to virtual machines is docker.
As loading different versions of php within apache with mod_php seems not to be posible, the easiest way of mimicking deployment and development setups will be with a virtualmachine, which you stated you would like to avoid.
One way of making the burden of vm's for developers a bit easier is to use something like vagrant. With two files (the vagrant file, and the chef/puppet file) you can "version" your vm's, easily create them and destroy them for each project and when needed.
virtPHP is a tool for creating and managing multiple isolated PHP environments on a single machine. It's like Python's virtualenv, but for PHP. (README)
https://github.com/virtphp/virtphp
You might be interested in this: https://github.com/phpenv/phpenv
(Haven't coded php in years, so this might be outdated)
As far as I remember you just had to point to another directory where your libraries reside (include PATH), using something like:
include_path = .:/usr/local/lib/php:./include (this goes in php.ini, default libararies)
and in your php files:
ini_set("include_path", ".:../:./include:../include");
PHP never really had a robust packaging system and library repository like perl/python/ruby has, PEAR was trying to move in that direction but it is very closed in comparison and was hard to configure in multiproject environments.
Phark is trying to build a brew/bundler port for php, https://github.com/lox/phark, although it's not deployment ready.
As of now, there is no out of the box solution to this problem. The only solution which comes close is Vagrant and puPHPet.com as discussed here: https://drupal.org/node/2055947
Why can't we have an environment like python's virtualenv or ruby's rbenv? It makes up a nice open source project. Multiple instances of PHP can be handy if we want to test out some libraries in sandboxes rather than globally. We can install dependencies for different projects using a package manager like Composer.
Cloudlinux with PHP Selector has this for ages. It is integrated with popular control panels like CPanel, DirectAdmin etc.
Each linux account can have its own version of php and select any extensions they sit fit.
https://www.cloudlinux.com/php-selector
I'd like to develop a PHP application that users would download and then could run. The application will have a web service.
I assume they will need Apache, but my main question is what is needed for PHP to run on their machine? Is there something needed like the JVM in Java or the .Net framework in .Net? What is it called and how difficult is it for them to download (size, etc.).
Is anything else required that I did not mention?
Thank you,
They will need a web server with a compatible version of php. That's it.
Are you asking what is required to run a .php file on a windows machine? Do you mean like an executable or a web server script?
If like an executable need the php files:
Download the php installer from http://windows.php.net/download/, and then you can run php.exe script.php
If like a web site:
You need a webserver (like apache) and the php.exe files. I would suggest if testing to download a prebuilt webserver like XAMPP (download from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html)
It depends on the application. At a minimum it will need PHP.
Is there something needed like the JVM in Java or the .Net framework in .Net? What is it called and how difficult is it for them to download (size, etc.).
PHP. Presumably as difficult as it is for you, but it depends on the platform. OS X comes with it. Most Linux variants either come with it, or allow it to be installed with one command to the package manager. Windows users will have to download it seperately.
As for other things that might be needed…
If it has a GUI, it might need PHP-GTK.
If it expects to be accessed via HTTP then they will need a webserver which supports PHP. This could be Apache, IIS, or one of numerous other servers.
(It isn't clear if, when you say "The application will have a web service.", you mean "The application will access a web service" or "The application will provide a web service". If the latter, then a web server will be needed).
If you use any non-core modules, then they will be needed as well.
You need to describe your proposed application a bit better. Is there a reason the application must be in PHP? It may be possible, but it's certainly not common to code and distribute a desktop application written in PHP.
There are a few options.
If you are just writing a script (command line, etc) you don't need a webserver. You just need PHP installed to run it (there are even downloadable installers for it).
If you are writing a web-based tool, then you will need your users to have a webserver if they are meant to run it on their physical machines. And you don't need a framework...
just think of it as a Webserver + PHP as a plugin. Some webserver options: Apache, nginx, lighttpd
Try having users install WAMP, MAMP, or Zend Server CE all of which are free and come with both a webserver and PHP.
If you really want a deployable PHP script/tool, maybe look into something like PHPDock, which gives your users a single installable app (embedded server, php). NuSphere PHPDock
Honestly, it's not the greatest language to use for this type of deployment, but it's certainly fun to try to figure out! Sorry for not linking out also, don't have enough rep points for all of the links I had intended to supply.
Actually you can run php script without the need to have a webserver installed.
Just install php and then from command line:
$ php myscript.php
If you really want you can even build GUI application with php even though I would not suggest it.
Cheers Andrea
you could also try to use quercus.
Quercus is Caucho Technology's fast,
open-source, 100% Java implementation
of the PHP language (requires JDK
1.5).
This way you only will need a jvm+quercus. It also is platform independent this way because it runs in the JVM.
I'm planning to build a CMS in PHP and MySQL, mainly for my own amusement and education. (Though who knows, I may come up with something useful and cool. Anything's possible.) I'll be asking questions about code architecture etc. later. For now, I'm more interested in development tools.
So far, all my playing with code has been done on a web server, and I've edited over FTP. I was thinking it might be quicker to use a localhost. Also, that way, I could use version control (which I've never done before).
So,
A. How do I set up a localhost server with many subdomains on an Ubuntu 9.10 computer. Is XAMPP for Linux the way to go, or should I use a standard Apache distro? (Or another webserver altogether?) For that matter, is it possible to set up more than one webserver on the same computer, and to use them for different localhost subdomains?
B. How do I set up a version control thingy covering all the code (which will be on several subdomains of localhost, and in a few shared folders)? I've read Joel Spolsky's HgInt tutorial, and it makes Mercurial look good. And simple, especially if you're working on your own.
C. Should I continue to use gEdit to write HTML/CSS/JS/PHP, or is there a better free editor out there for these languages?
A. Why would you use XAMPP when installing a LAMP stack is as easy as sudo tasksel install lamp-server? You can add as many domains to the configuration as you want using VirtualHosts for example (well theoretically anyway, in practice the amount will be limited by the available resources), you don't need multiple servers for that.
B. sudo apt-get install mercurial maybe? Of course, how to create a repository and add your projects is up to you - you should read the documentation of Mercurial.
C. Use Eclipse or NetBeans if you're planning to do any serious development work.
I'd recommend against using XAMPP, particularly if you're inexperienced as this would bypass all the package management functionality integrated in Ubuntu (so you need to manually track and apply security changes, if you need extensions not in the XAMPP distro you'll need to compile from scratch, similar for most of the external admin tools which might interact with the Apache install).
Yes - you can have lots of virtual hosts on the same webserver (rcently worked somewhere with 1200 named virtual hosts on each Apache webserver - start up took about 2 seconds rather than 0.5 - but after that you'd never have known the config files were HUGE).
If you're working on your own, then this is about the only scenario where using a distributed version control system offers no benefits over concurrent version control system, and a concurrent version control system offers no benefit over a conventional version control system. But even though it offers no advantage in the technology, it may be of benefit to you to acquire specific product skills.
What editor you use is matter of personal choice. Though personally I would list gEdit in my recommendations (I'd suggest NetBeans or Zend Studio for people who like standalone IDEs, otherwise vim, Eclipse, emacs).
A php documentor is (IMHO) a must (I like phpxref) along with some sort of testing toolkit.
HTH
C.
A: I've used Xampp for Linux successfully on Ubuntu. It's not hard to setup a normal apache installation, but I like the advantage of having a "temporary" web server where the changes are easy to reverse without affecting my normal installation.
If you want subdomains, configure apache to use virtualhosts.
B: I suggest subversion, but VCS is something of a religious issue. It doesn't matter what you use particularly. Once you've made a choice, then research the usage of a VCS.
C: Netbeans is much better than gEdit. That or Eclipse would be my preference. I use Netbeans under Ubuntu myself. A full IDE though will make development much easier than a text editor. Mostly because of code completion/integrated debugger.
I think stackoverflow.com is for programming questions. You'd want to ask those server questions on serverfault.com. Then again, they'd probably ask you to google it. Give it a try.
The editor question is cool. I use Kate, just because it comes with KDE and has syntax coloring.
I've just started reading about php, it needs me to install php, apache and MySql to run any php script. can any one suggest me a simplest method to install php, apache and MySql so that i can sun those php script.
I've tried the zip files from php.net, Are those required to run the script offline for practicing the script? what do i do with them? i felt the things given on the same site a bit complex, and was unable to run the script. please help.
I'm assuming you're using Windows - get wamp - it has exactly what you need:
Apache
MySQL
PHP
Wamp comes with a nifty tray controller app which you can use to access the most common tasks, like restarting services, editing config, etc.
Equivalent to Artem's post, just a different organization which packages it differently. And my preference. It is called XAMPP.
If you are using Windows, you could install XAMPP to have the environment setup for you. You'll then need to learn how to bring up the server (basically executing the XAMPP control panel program), copy your PHP scripts into the correct directories (for XAMPP, it'd be C:/[xampp installation dir]/htdocs), access MySQL and creating the necessary MySQL databases (you could access the MySQL via the included PhpMyAdmin).
You can probably refer to a tutorial here (it's a YouTube video, BTW).
Don't have enough rep to comment but wanted to add something to Artem's recommendation of Wampserver. It's what I use on my windows machine, and one of the nicest things about it I find is the ability to have multiple versions of versions of apache, php and mysql installed alongside each other as plug-ins and then select which to have running at any time. It makes it easy for me to emulate the eventual hosting environment for any given project.