Build Your Own DatabaseDriven Website Using PHP amp;amp; MySQL [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Windows Installation

Installing MySQL

As I mentioned above, MySQL may
be downloaded free of charge. Simply proceed to http://www.mysql.com/downloads/ and
choose the recommended stable release (as of this writing, it is MySQL 3.23).
On the MySQL 3.23 download page, under the heading of Windows downloads,
click the Download link next to the latest version of
MySQL (3.23.54 as of this writing). After downloading the file (it's about
13MB as of this writing), unzip it and run the setup.exe program
contained therein.

Once installed, MySQL is ready to roll (barring a couple of configuration
tasks that we'll look at shortly), except for one minor issue that only affects
you if you're running Windows NT, 2000, XP, or .NET Server. If you use any
of those operating systems, find a file called my-small.cnf in
the directory to which you just installed MySQL. Copy it to the root of your C: drive
and rename it to my.cnf. See the following sidebar if you have any trouble working with .cnf files
on your Windows system.

It
just so happens that files ending in .cnf have a special
meaning to Windows, so even if you have Windows configured to show file extensions,
the my-small.cnf file will still appear as simply my-small with
a special icon. Windows actually expects these files to contain SpeedDial
links for Microsoft NetMeeting.

Assuming you don't use NetMeeting (or at least you don't use its SpeedDial
facility) you can remove this file type from your system, enabling you to
work with these files normally:

Open the Windows Registry Editor (in WinNT/2000/XP/.NET, click Start, Run...,
and then type regedt32.exe to launch it, in Win9x/ME
run regedit.exe instead).

Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes branch
of the registry, where you'll find a list of all the registered file types
on the system.

Select the .cnf key and choose Edit, Delete from
the menu to remove it.

Log out and log back in, or restart Windows for the change to
take effect.

If you prefer not to mess with the file types on your system, however,
you should still be able to open the files in Notepad to edit them and you
can rename it to my.cnf by renaming the SpeedDial link
icon to my (Windows will maintain the .cnf extension
automatically).

If you don't like the idea of a MySQL configuration file sitting in
the root of your C: drive, you can instead name it my.ini and put it in your Windows directory (e.g. D:\WINDOWS or D:\WINNT if
Windows is installed on drive D:). Whichever you choose,
open the file in Notepad and look for the following lines:

#basedir = d:/mysql/
#datadir = d:/mysql/data/

Uncomment these lines by removing the # symbol at
the start, and change the paths to point to your MySQL installation directory,
using slashes (/) instead of backslashes (\).
For instance, I changed the lines on my system to read as follows:

basedir = d:/Program Files/MySQL/
datadir = d:/Program Files/MySQL/data/

With that change made, save the file and close Notepad. MySQL will now
run on your Windows NT/2000/XP system! If you're using Windows 95/98/ME, this
step is not necessary—MySQL will run just fine as-installed.

Just like your Web server, MySQL is a program that should be run in
the background so that it may respond to requests for information at any time.
The server program may be found in the bin subfolder
of the folder into which you installed MySQL. To make things complicated,
however, there are actually several versions of the MySQL server to choose
from:

mysqld.exe This is the
basic version of MySQL if you run Windows 95, 98, or ME. It includes support
for all advanced features, and includes debug code to provide additional information
in the case of a crash (if your system is set up to debug programs). As a
result of this code, however, the server might run a little slow, and I've
generally found that MySQL is so stable that crashes aren't really a concern.

mysqld-opt.exe This version of the server
lacks a few of the advanced features of the basic server, and does not include
the debug code. It's optimized to run quickly on today's processors. For beginners,
the advanced features are not a big concern. You certainly won't be using
them while you complete the tasks in this book. This is the version of choice
for beginners running Windows 95, 98, or ME.

mysqld-nt.exe This version of the server
is compiled and optimized like mysqld-opt, but is designed
to run under Windows NT/2000/XP/.NET as a service. If you're using any of
those operating systems, this is probably the server for you.

mysqld-max.exe This version is like mysqld-opt,
but contains advanced features that support transactions.

mysqld-max-nt.exe This version's similar
to mysqld-nt, but has advanced features that support
transactions.

All these versions were installed for you in the bin directory.
If you're running on Win98x/ME I recommend sticking with mysql-opt for
now—move to mysqld-max if you ever need the advanced
features. On Windows NT/2000/XP/.NET, mysqld-nt is my
recommendation. Upgrade to mysqld-max-nt when you need
more advanced features.

Starting MySQL is also a little different under WinNT/2000/XP/.NET,
but this time let's start with the procedure for Win95/98/ME. Open an MS-DOS
Command Prompt^[2] and proceed to the MySQL bin directory, and
run your chosen server program:

C:\mysql\bin>mysqld-opt

Don't be surprised when you receive another command prompt. This command
launches the server program so that it runs in the background, even after
you close the command prompt. If you press Ctrl-Alt-Del to pull up the task
list, you should see the MySQL server listed as one of the tasks that's active
on your system.

To ensure that the server is started whenever
Windows starts, you might want to create a short cut to the program and put
it in your Startup folder. This is just like creating
a short cut to any other program on your system.

On WinNT/2000/XP/.NET, you must install MySQL as a system service. Fortunately,
this is very easy to do. Simply open a Command Prompt (under Accessories in
the Start Menu) and run your chosen server program with the --install option:

C:\mysql\bin>mysqld-nt --install
Service successfully installed.

This will install MySQL as a service that will be started the next time
you reboot Windows. To manually start MySQL without having to reboot, just
type this command (which can be run from any directory):

C:\>net start mysql
The MySQL service is starting.
The MySQL service was started successfully.

To verify that the MySQL server is running properly, press Ctrl-Alt-Del
and open the Task List. If all is well, the server program should be listed
on the Processes tab.

Installing PHP

The next step is to install PHP. At the time
of this writing, PHP 4.x has become well-established as the version of choice;
however, some old servers still use PHP 3.x (usually because nobody has bothered
to update it). I'll cover the installation of PHP 4.3.0 here, so be aware
that if you're still working with PHP 3.x there may be some differences.

Download PHP for free from http://www.php.net/downloads.php.
You'll want the Windows Binaries package, and be sure
to grab the version that includes both the CGI binary and the server API versions
if you have a choice.

In addition to PHP itself, you will need a Web server such
as Internet Information Services (IIS), Apache, Sambar or OmniHTTPD. PHP was
designed to run as a plug-in for existing Web server software. To test dynamic
Web pages with PHP, you'll need to equip your own computer with Web server
software, so that PHP has something to plug into. If you have Windows 2000,
XP Professional^[3], or .NET Server, then install IIS (if it's not already on your
system): open Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Add/Remove
Windows Components, and select IIS from the
list of components. If you're not lucky enough to have IIS at your disposal^[4], you can instead use a free 3rd party Web server like Apache.
I'll give instructions for both options in detail.

First, whether you have IIS or not, complete these
steps:

Unzip the file you downloaded into a directory of your choice.
I recommend C:\PHP and will refer to this directory from
here onward, but feel free to choose another directory if you like.

Find the file called php4ts.dll in the PHP
folder and copy it to the System32 subfolder of your
Windows folder (e.g. C:\Windows\System32).

Find
the file called php.ini-dist in the PHP folder and copy
it to your Windows folder. Once there, rename it to php.ini.

Open the php.ini file in your favourite text
editor (use WordPad if Notepad doesn't display the file properly). It's a
large file with a lot of confusing options, but look for a line that begins
with extension_dir and set it so that it points to your
PHP folder:

extension_dir = C:\PHP

A little further down, look for a line that starts with session.save_path and
set it to your Windows TEMP folder:

session.save_path = C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

Save the changes you made and close your text editor.

Now, if you have IIS, follow
these instructions:

In the Windows Control Panel, open Administrative
Tools, Internet Information Services.

In the tree view, expand the entry labelled local computer,
then under Web Sites look for Default Web Site (unless
you have virtual hosts set up, in which case, choose the site you want to
add PHP support to). Right-click on the site and choose Properties.

Click the ISAPI Filters tab, and click Add....
In the Filter Name field, type PHP,
and in the Executable field, browse for the file called php4isapi.dll in
the sapi subfolder of your PHP folder (e.g. C:\PHP\sapi\php4isapi.dll).
Click OK.

Click the Home Directory tab, and click the Configuration... button.
On the Mappings tab click Add. Again
choose your php4isapi.dll file as the executable and
type .php in the extension box (including the '.').
Leave everything else unchanged and click OK. If you want your Web server
to treat other file extensions as PHP files (.php3, .php4,
and .phtml are common choices), repeat this step for each
extension. Click OK to close the Application Configuration window.

Click the Documents tab, and click the Add... button.
Type index.php as the Default Document Name and
click OK. This will ensure that a file called index.php will
be displayed as the default document in a given folder on your site. You may
also want to add entries for index.php3 and index.phtml.

Click OK to close the Web Site Properties window.
Close the Internet Information Services window.

Again, in the Control Panel under Administrative
Tools, open Services. Look for the World
Wide Web Publishing service near the bottom of the list. Right-click
on it and choose Restart to restart IIS with the new
configuration options. Close the Services window.

You're done! PHP is installed!

If you don't
have IIS, you'll first need to install some other Web server. For
our purposes I'll assume you have downloaded and installed Apache server from http://httpd.apache.org/; however,
PHP can also be installed on Sambar Server, OmniHTTPD, and others. I recommend
Apache 1.3 for now, but if you want to use Apache 2.0, be sure to read the
following sidebar.

As of this writing, the PHP team continues to insist
that support for running PHP on Apache 2.0 is experimental only.
There are a number of bugs that arise within PHP when it is run on an Apache
2.0 server, and on Windows especially, installation can be problematic. That
said, many people are running PHP on Apache 2.0 quite successfully, and the
bugs that do exist probably won't affect you if you're just setting up a low-traffic
testing server.

The instructions below apply to both Apache 1.3 and Apache 2.0; however,
it is possible that after configuring Apache 2.0 to use PHP, the server will
fail to start. It is also possible that it will start, but that it will fail
to process PHP scripts. In both cases, an error message should appear when
you start Apache and/or in the Apache error log file.

This problem is caused by the fact that Apache 2.0 is a server still
very much under development. With each minor release they put out, they tend
to break compatibility with all server plug-in modules (such as PHP) that
were compiled to work with the previous version. On Unix, this isn't such
a big deal because people tend to compile PHP for themselves, so they simply
re-compile PHP at the same time they're compiling the new release of Apache
and PHP adapts accordingly. Unfortunately, on Windows, where people are used
to simply downloading pre-compiled files, the situation is different.

The php4apache2.dll file that is distributed with
PHP will only work on versions of Apache 2.0 up to the one that was current
at the time that version of PHP was released. So if you run into problems,
the version of PHP you're using is probably older than the version of Apache
you're using. This problem can often be fixed by downloading the very latest
version of PHP; however, every time a new release of Apache 2.0 comes out,
the current release of PHP will be incompatible until they get around to updating
it.

Should you ever install a later version of Apache and break compatibility
with the latest PHP build, you should be able to download a 'work-in-progress'
version of PHP and grab just the files you need (those responsible for the
PHP-Apache interface). Information about doing this can be found in the PHP bug database.

Once you've downloaded and installed Apache according to the instructions
included with it, open http://localhost/ in your Web browser,
to make sure it works properly. If you don't see a Web page explaining that
Apache was successfully installed, then either you haven't run Apache yet,
or your installation is faulty. Check the documentation and make sure Apache
is running properly before you install PHP.

If you've made sure Apache is up and running, you can add PHP support:

On your Start Menu, choose Programs, Apache
HTTP Server, Configure Apache Server, Edit
Configuration. This will open the httpd.conf file
in Notepad.

All of the options in this long and intimidating configuration
file should have been set up correctly by the Apache install program. All
you need to do is add the following three lines to the very bottom of the
file:

LoadModule php4_module c:/php/sapi/php4apache.dll
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3 .phtml
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Make sure the LoadModule line points to the appropriate
file in the PHP installation directory on your system, and note the use of
slashes (/) instead of backslashes (\).

Next, look for the line that begins with DirectoryIndex.
This line tells Apache what file names to use when it looks for the default
page for a given directory. You'll see the usual indexl and
so forth, but you need to add index.php, index.php3,
and index.phtml to that list if they're not there already:

DirectoryIndex indexl ... index.php index.php3 index.phtml

Save your changes and close Notepad.

Restart Apache by choosing Programs, Apache
HTTP Server, Control Apache Server, Restart on
the Start menu (or type NET STOP Apache && NET START Apache at
the command prompt). If all is well, Apache will start up again without complaint.

You're done! PHP is installed!

With MySQL and PHP installed, you're ready to proceed to "Post-Installation Setup Tasks".

^[2]If you're unfamiliar with the
workings of the Command Prompt, check out my article Kev's
Command Prompt Cheat Sheet to get familiar with how it works before
you proceed further.

^[3]Windows XP Home Edition does not come with
IIS.

^[4]A feature-limited edition of IIS called “Personal Web Server”
(PWS) was distributed on the Windows 98 Second Edition CD, and was available
for earlier editions of Windows as well. While PHP can technically run on
PWS, this Web server is somewhat unstable and has a great many known security
holes. For these reasons, I highly recommend using Apache if an up-to-date
version of IIS is not available for your Windows operating system.