CakePHP 2.0 + Nginx + PHP-CGI + phpMyAdmin on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
Date: Mon, Nov 7th 2011, 15:34 Author: nick Views: 2927 Comments: 2 share
Setup CakePHP 2.0 nginx + php-cgi + mysql + phpmyadmin on OS X Lion
My company just bought me a new macbook and while it shouldn't have taken me as long as it did to setup my development environment for CakePHP, there were a few gotchas that I thought maybe you could learn from my mistake or perhaps correct my wrongs. So without futher adue, lets jump right in.
Coming to mac from Ubuntu, I'm really (read extremely) thankful macports exists. Apple's App Store is nice, but as of now I couldn't find any decent development tools in the app store to easily download and setup. I'm comfortable with the command line so as soon as I discovered macports I was right at home.
To install macports you'll first need to install xcode from the Apple App Store. Once you've installed xcode, simply hop over to http://www.macports.org/install.php to download the latest dmg for lion.
Once you've successfully installed macports you're ready to rock and roll. I then install nginx, php-cgi, php5, php5-gd, php5-mysql, php5-mcrypt using the command line.
Mac comes with PHP installed already, but instead of trying to get that version to work with everything I instead just used macports to install a clean version of PHP for me to configure to how I like things to run completely separate from the mac's default setup.
Enough foreplay, lets get to it, install nginx first.
Copy working configuration default into its own configuration
If you want to launch nginx on system startup simply run the plist insalled by the port:
TIP: start and stop nginx on demand from the command line, but don't do it yet! We have to configure it more first.
Start Nginx on demand:
Stop Nginx on demand:
I could have gone with macports, and in retrospect, perhaps I should have, but I actually went ahead and installed the official package from dev.mysql.com here:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/
I selected the 64bit arch Mac OS ver 10.6, which works fine under Lion (10.7). This version comes with a nice little system preferences pane so you can stop and start it directly from your mac system preferences -- slick. Once you've installed that lets move onto the rest.
The default install of mysql doesn't include a password for your root login, this won't play nice with phpMyAdmin when we finally install it, so go ahead and add a root password by running this command:
If you get a mysqladmin command not found, make sure to add /usr/local/mysql/bin path in your ~/.profile and try again.
To reload your profile type:
Like I said before, Lion comes with its own PHP install, but I much prefer to work with the package manager whenever possible, so I'm installing a fresh copy of PHP in /opt/local. Let's also install php5 with fastcgi (we need for nginx to talk to PHP) along with some of the nicer libraries we want access to for phpMyAdmin and mysql.
Starting php-cgi:
Stopping PHP-CGI:
You'll need to start the php-cgi whenever you want nginx to talk to PHP via CGI daemon. I ended up writting a little bash to start this for me with a simple command and saved it to ~/bin/start_php_cgi.sh
Open up /opt/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf in your favorite editor and configure it:
This is a basic nginx setup to run with PHP-CGI nicely. You'll have to add a little more to get it to work nicely with a CakePHP install, but we'll get to that soon enough. As you can see, I like to root things in /var/www, make sure this directory exists for you
Lets write a testfile to see what we've got so far!
Start nginx, php-cgi and then navigate to localhost/index.php to see your hard work in all its glory.
Grab the latest version of phpMyAdmin from: http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php (version 3.4.7 when writing) and unpack it wherever you'd like (I put mine in /opt/local/phpMyAdmin).
Since I like to keep my route in /var/www as my default for nginx, I then created a symlink between where I installed phpMyAdmin and /var/www/phpMyAdmin
Now navigate to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin and you should be greeted with a nice phpMyAdmin screen.
If you've gotten this far, GOOD JOB! To get to this point it took me nearly an entire day. We're on the home stretch, just a few more things to get CakePHP 2.0 to bake and work on your new sparkly mac!
Grab the latest version of CakePHP from github, you may first have to install git. I grabbed a copy from http://git-scm.com but you could install it using macports if you want. After you have git up and running run:
Once you've cloned the repository note the location where you cloned it and update your .profile with an alias so you can run cake commands from anywhere
Reload your profile
Now lets bake our first app!
Now you'll need to configure a new nginx virtual host for your cakePHP app. I personally like to create new site files and name them for each virtual site I want to run.
For this example I would save a site in /opt/local/etc/nginx/testapp.conf with the following:
Then I would add a single line to the nginx.conf file right before the http enclosure
Stop and start nginx:
Add your new server_name to your /private/etc/hosts file
Now navigate to http://dev.testapp.devlocal on your machine and you should see your brand new baked CakePHP 2.0 app! Congratulations, happy baking!
I hope this tutorial helped, comments are appreciated.
My company just bought me a new macbook and while it shouldn't have taken me as long as it did to setup my development environment for CakePHP, there were a few gotchas that I thought maybe you could learn from my mistake or perhaps correct my wrongs. So without futher adue, lets jump right in.
Mac Ports is our friend!
Coming to mac from Ubuntu, I'm really (read extremely) thankful macports exists. Apple's App Store is nice, but as of now I couldn't find any decent development tools in the app store to easily download and setup. I'm comfortable with the command line so as soon as I discovered macports I was right at home.
To install macports you'll first need to install xcode from the Apple App Store. Once you've installed xcode, simply hop over to http://www.macports.org/install.php to download the latest dmg for lion.
Once you've successfully installed macports you're ready to rock and roll. I then install nginx, php-cgi, php5, php5-gd, php5-mysql, php5-mcrypt using the command line.
Mac comes with PHP installed already, but instead of trying to get that version to work with everything I instead just used macports to install a clean version of PHP for me to configure to how I like things to run completely separate from the mac's default setup.
Nginx Install
Enough foreplay, lets get to it, install nginx first.
- sudo port install nginx
Copy working configuration default into its own configuration
- sudo cp /opt/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf.default /opt/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
If you want to launch nginx on system startup simply run the plist insalled by the port:
- sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mackports.nginx.plist
TIP: start and stop nginx on demand from the command line, but don't do it yet! We have to configure it more first.
Start Nginx on demand:
- sudo nginx
Stop Nginx on demand:
- sudo nginx -s stop
Installing MySQL
I could have gone with macports, and in retrospect, perhaps I should have, but I actually went ahead and installed the official package from dev.mysql.com here:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/
I selected the 64bit arch Mac OS ver 10.6, which works fine under Lion (10.7). This version comes with a nice little system preferences pane so you can stop and start it directly from your mac system preferences -- slick. Once you've installed that lets move onto the rest.
The default install of mysql doesn't include a password for your root login, this won't play nice with phpMyAdmin when we finally install it, so go ahead and add a root password by running this command:
- sudo mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD
If you get a mysqladmin command not found, make sure to add /usr/local/mysql/bin path in your ~/.profile and try again.
- # .profile
- export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH
To reload your profile type:
- . .profile
Installing PHP with PHP-CGI (FastCGI)
Like I said before, Lion comes with its own PHP install, but I much prefer to work with the package manager whenever possible, so I'm installing a fresh copy of PHP in /opt/local. Let's also install php5 with fastcgi (we need for nginx to talk to PHP) along with some of the nicer libraries we want access to for phpMyAdmin and mysql.
- sudo port install php5 +fastcgi fcgi php5-gd php5-mysql php5-mcrypt
Starting php-cgi:
- php-cgi -q -b 127.0.0.1:9000 &
Stopping PHP-CGI:
- sudo killall php-cgi
You'll need to start the php-cgi whenever you want nginx to talk to PHP via CGI daemon. I ended up writting a little bash to start this for me with a simple command and saved it to ~/bin/start_php_cgi.sh
- #!/bin/bash
- php-cgi -q -b 127.0.0.1:9000 &
Configure Nginx
Open up /opt/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf in your favorite editor and configure it:
- #user nobody;
- worker_processes 1;
- error_log /opt/local/logs/error.log;
- pid /opt/local/logs/nginx.pid;
- events {
- worker_connections 1024;
- }
- http {
- include mime.types;
- default_type application/octet-stream;
- access_log /opt/local/logs/access.log main;
- sendfile on;
- #tcp_nopush on;
- #keepalive_timeout 0;
- keepalive_timeout 65;
- gzip on;
- server {
- listen 80;
- server_name localhost;
- root /var/www;
- index index.html index.htm index.php;
- # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
- #
- error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
- location = /50x.html {
- root /var/www;
- }
- # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
- #
- location ~ \.php$ {
- #root /var/www;
- fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
- fastcgi_index index.php;
- fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
- include fastcgi_params;
- }
- }
- }
This is a basic nginx setup to run with PHP-CGI nicely. You'll have to add a little more to get it to work nicely with a CakePHP install, but we'll get to that soon enough. As you can see, I like to root things in /var/www, make sure this directory exists for you
- sudo mkdir /var/www
Lets write a testfile to see what we've got so far!
- sudo echo "<?php echo phpinfo(); ?>" > /var/www/index.php
Start nginx, php-cgi and then navigate to localhost/index.php to see your hard work in all its glory.
Installing phpMyAdmin
Grab the latest version of phpMyAdmin from: http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php (version 3.4.7 when writing) and unpack it wherever you'd like (I put mine in /opt/local/phpMyAdmin).
Since I like to keep my route in /var/www as my default for nginx, I then created a symlink between where I installed phpMyAdmin and /var/www/phpMyAdmin
- sudo ln -s /opt/local/phpMyAdmin /var/www/phpMyAdmin
Now navigate to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin and you should be greeted with a nice phpMyAdmin screen.
Install CakePHP 2.0
If you've gotten this far, GOOD JOB! To get to this point it took me nearly an entire day. We're on the home stretch, just a few more things to get CakePHP 2.0 to bake and work on your new sparkly mac!
Grab the latest version of CakePHP from github, you may first have to install git. I grabbed a copy from http://git-scm.com but you could install it using macports if you want. After you have git up and running run:
- git clone https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp.git
Once you've cloned the repository note the location where you cloned it and update your .profile with an alias so you can run cake commands from anywhere
- # .profile
- alias cake="/path/to/cakephp/lib/Cake/Console/cake"
Reload your profile
- . .profile
Now lets bake our first app!
- cd path/to/where/you/want/app
- cake bake app
Now you'll need to configure a new nginx virtual host for your cakePHP app. I personally like to create new site files and name them for each virtual site I want to run.
For this example I would save a site in /opt/local/etc/nginx/testapp.conf with the following:
- server {
- listen 80;
- server_name dev.testapp.devlocal;
- access_log /var/log/nginx/dev.testapp.devlocal.access.log;
- error_log /var/log/nginx/dev.testapp.devlocal.error.log;
- rewrite_log on;
- root /path/to/cakephp/app/testapp/app/webroot;
- index index.php;
- # Not found this on disk?
- # Feed to CakePHP for further processing!
- if (!-e $request_filename) {
- rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?url=$1 last;
- break;
- }
- # Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server
- # listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
- location ~ \.php$ {
- fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
- fastcgi_index index.php;
- fastcgi_intercept_errors on; # to support 404s for PHP files no$
- fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
- include fastcgi_params;
- }
- # Deny access to .htaccess files,
- # git & svn repositories, etc
- location ~ /(\.ht|\.git|\.svn) {
- deny all;
- }
- }
Then I would add a single line to the nginx.conf file right before the http enclosure
- include testapp.conf;
Stop and start nginx:
- sudo nginx -s stop
- sudo nginx
Add your new server_name to your /private/etc/hosts file
- 127.0.0.1 localhost dev.testapp.devlocal
Now navigate to http://dev.testapp.devlocal on your machine and you should see your brand new baked CakePHP 2.0 app! Congratulations, happy baking!
I hope this tutorial helped, comments are appreciated.
