I recall a class I took a few years ago during my first semester in the software engineering Master's program at the University of Michigan. This particular class stays with me as the instructor had a "guest speaker" who was on the development team for the Zend Framework. At the time I chose to use a different framework (and language) so I filed the usage of the Zend Framework for a rainy day. I think that day has come...but in a good way.
Recently I had been working on a PHP-based web application. I would like to say that it is finished...but unfortunately I need to do a few more housekeeping things with it and write a few more pages. This project though got me thinking, the first time a year ago, and then again three months ago that I would like to migrate it to a purer MVC-based application than what it is right now. There were multiple catastrophic failures while I was writing and backing up code along with the "customer" in this case changing requirements multiple times. So while I started initially with an MVC pattern, the current state of the application is much more ad hoc than I had wanted. Which is what got me started thinkning again the ZendFramework and what led indirectly to this blog entry.
I figured that it shouldn't be too hard to install a well-known framework on my Ubuntu VM or my craptastic Windows 8 host...right? Turns out that it was a little more complex than I anticipated. Between Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.04 I would say that the required workload is about the same. Since I prefer Ubuntu, I want to focus on that, especially since I built this VM specifically for development projects. So without any more fluff or garbage from me...
I found an install guide on the zendframework.com website. While the guide was good, and offered multiple options, it certainly wasn't exact...or maybe the right word is "complete."
The first option in the guide is that of using composer. However, unless you know to add the right flags to ignore stabilty, so I am going to skip over the usage of composer for this install and instead, clone the git repository of the framework and go from there. I do have some screenshots as well as some video (I am going to make my first attempt at a YouTube instructional video for this effort) that I will load/link here on a future update of this post.
The steps that worked for me (using a base, updated install of Ubuntu 12.04 iso):
1. Clone the Skeleton Application repository from github:
sudo git clone https://github.com/zendframework/ZendSkeletonApplication.git /var/www/zf2-skeletonApp
2. cd into new directory: cd /var/www/zf2-skeletonApp
3. Now here is where we'll use the composer inside the framework to install:
sudo php composer.phar self-update
sudo php composer.phar install
When the above two commands are run and completed, which can take a few minutes, you will most likely get a block of messages like the below that describe additional functionality you can add to you Zend Framework.
Loading composer repositories with package information Installing dependencies (including require-dev) - Installing zendframework/zendframework (2.2.5) Downloading: 100%
zendframework/zendframework suggests installing ext-intl (ext/intl for i18n features (included in default builds of PHP)) zendframework/zendframework suggests installing doctrine/annotations (Doctrine Annotations >=1.0 for annotation features) zendframework/zendframework suggests installing ircmaxell/random-lib (Fallback random byte generator for Zend\Math\Rand if OpenSSL/Mcrypt extensions are unavailable) zendframework/zendframework suggests installing ocramius/proxy-manager (ProxyManager to handle lazy initialization of services) zendframework/zendframework suggests installing zendframework/zendpdf (ZendPdf for creating PDF representations of barcodes) zendframework/zendframework suggests installing zendframework/zendservice-recaptcha (ZendService\ReCaptcha for rendering ReCaptchas in Zend\Captcha and/or Zend\Form) Writing lock file Generating autoload files
4. Set up required VirtualHost - Depending on your setup, you will need to modify one or more of the below:
- /etc/http/httpd.conf
- /etc/http/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
- /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
On Ubuntu (and other Debian based systems that package apache under /etc/apache2), the virtual host setup can be a little tricky. To start with, create a file with the name of the file being the same as your hostname. So, since I have called my virtual host zf2-skeletonApp, I have created:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/zf2-skeletonApp.localhost with the following content:
Take note of ServerName, DocumentRoot, and Directory. ServerName is the NamedVirtualHost value that apache2 will look for when the site is requested. DocumentRoot and Directory both contain the full paths to the 'public' directory of the zf2-skeletonApp. This is where the Zend Framework will serve the default index.php.
6. So that we don't forget to do it later, let's make sure that the site is enabled and that the ReWrite mod is enabled.
- You could run the command to enable the Rewrite mod without checking to see if it's already enabled. However, you should spend a minute and drive around your apache2 file structure a little bit and what better chance than this one. :-) Check the listing of the files in /etc/apache2/mods-rewrite/ ls -la /etc/apache2/mods-rewrite Now, to enable the Rewrite mod, use the following commnad. sudo a2enmod rewrite
7. Now it's time to update /etc/hosts so that your hostname will resolve (loopback address is perfectly fine for this) - 127.0.0.1 zf2-skeletonApp.localhost zf2-skeletonApp
8. One final restart your web server sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
9. Check your work by attempting to open the zf2-skeletonApp.localhost site in your browser firefox http://zf2-skeletonApp.localhost &
10. If everything was successful you should be looking at the welcome page (zf2-skeletonApp/public/index.html). - If you get the default apache2 install page, or some other page, then you missed a step.
