Xampp setup

This instruction guides you step by step to install CakePHP and MySQL Database virtual server on Windows operating system, then set up the required dependencies to connect CakePHP application to database and run it on virtual server.

Initial requirements:

• Download the latest version of XAMPP for Windows (EXE): https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html
• Download the latest version of MyWebSQL (ZIP): http://mywebsql.net/downloads/
• Download Composer (EXE) - optional: https://getcomposer.org/download/
  • Composer is a tool for managing dependencies in any PHP Frameworks. You can declare, install and update PHP libraries for your project. You can install Composer using either the installer or command-line.
• Download and install a Text Editor (you can use Windows Notepad if you wish), or a PHP IDE, which will be used during your project development. I personally recommend the following software which I think are the best tools at the moment:
  • Visual Studio Code: a free powerful light-weight text editor that provides thousands of Extensions, which can be added to the base installation. You can get this tool from the following site: https://code.visualstudio.com/download
  • PHPStorm: a smart IDE for PHP projects. This tool requires a license but if you're a student or an education staff, you can obtain community or free license. Here you have a look at it: https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/

Once you're done with the above requirements, Let's get started, it only takes a few minutes.

Step 1: Disable your Windows User Account Control (UAC) if you wish to install the tools for all users on your Windows. Apart from that, UAC sometimes prevents the software from setting permissions or adding new entries to the environment PATHvariables.

• If you're familiar with adding environment PATH variables then you can skip this step. You can also enable UAC when you finish setting up CakePHP.

Step 2: Run XAMPP installer and let it finish. Make sure Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin are checked at Select Components. You may need Mercury Mail Server, Webaliser and Fake Sendmail later so it's up to you to decide.

• You can select a custom Installation Folder if you wish but I will go with default setting for now: C:\xampp
• Don't forget to allow network access on the pop-up confirmation.

Step 3: Set up XAMPP dependencies:

• Open XAMPP controller, click on the X icons to install the required services, then click on Start buttons to run Apache and MySQL services.

• Look for this file config.inc.php in XAMPP folder, for me: C:\xampp\phpMyAdmin\
• Change the value of the following variable: $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';

• Now on XAMPP controller, click on Admin button in MySQL service to open phpMyAdmin, which is a local database server management tool.
• The first time you open, the default login credential is root for username and blank password. Make sure you change your root password after login.

• Click on tab User Accounts and select "Add new user account":

• Select Host name as Local as we want it to run on localhost. Enter your username and password.
• Select Check all in Global privileges if you want full admin rights on your database.

• Open the Environment Variables windows: Control Panel / System / Advanced system settings / Environment Variables / System variables / Path, then add new path to php.exe to the list.
• Default path is C:\xampp\php.

• Check if adding is succeed by run this command in command-prompt: php -v. You should see your PHP version.

Step 4: Set up composer and CakePHP:

• Method 1: Run your Composer-Setup.exe, this way the composer.phar executable will be added to Environment Variables automatically.
• Method 2: Install composer via command-prompt:
  • Run this command: php -r "readfile('https://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php, then add the composer.phar executable to your Environment Variables as the guide above.
  • The default executable path: C:\Users\Jay\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\bin

Step 5: Set up PHP dependencies to work with CakePHP:

• Look for the file php.ini in folder C:\xampp\php, then uncomment this line by removing the semicolon to enable the PHP intl extension: extension=intl
• In folder C:\xampp\php, copy the files with name icu*.dll, then paste and replace the corresponding files in folder C:\xampp\apache\bin

• Now that you have done the last step in setting up CakePHP on Windows platform, restart your Apache and MySQL services in XAMPP controller, open new command-prompt and use this command to have composer generate your first CakePHP project:

php composer.phar create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app your_app_name

• After the command completes the execution, move your project folder to C:\xampp\htdocs, the default project folder location is C:\Users\Jay\
• Now your project is available to view on localhost via this link: localhost/your_app_name.

• This is the default CakePHP layout, and you will notice that Database connection is still missing. Let's continue to set it up.

Step 6: Set up your MySQL database server:

• Extract the file mywebsql-x.x.zip, then move the extracted folfer to C:\xampp\htdocs.
• In your web browser, open localhost/mywebsql and log-in with the user account you created in Step 3.

• Once logged in, let's create a new database for your project as demonstrated below.

• Now select your database and run your SQL commands to create tables.

Step 7: Connect your project to Database and bake your tables:

• Open the file app.php in your project folder: C:\xampp\htdocs\jayblog\config\
• Update your Security.salt, which will be used for password hashing:

• To connect to database, update Datasources.default as following:

You're almost done now, let's bake your first table into the project:

• First, add the cake executable of your project to Environment Variables to let the system recognize your Cake app: C:\xampp\htdocs\your_app_name\bin
• Open a new command-prompt, cd to your project folder then run command: cake bake all
• That command will list all tables in your database which is using in your project. Here I have 3 tables:

• Now bake each table one by one until you bake all tables into your project. This is the command: cake bake all table_name.

That's the last step. Now look at your project folder, there will be the models, controllers and views for every table in the database. From now, it's so easy to go on and quickly complete any web applications with CakePHP.