Mac Development Environment

Hi there …
For our Mac development environment; we’ll be setting up our Xampp virtual server again, like we did for our windows development environment. Plase read the windows development environment tutorial, to learn more about what Xampp is, what a server is, how your development environemnt works etc.

We use Xampp because it makes it quite easy to setup a LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) system on your local machine. Essentially, saving us the pain of setting up the PHP and MYSQL systems necessary for a simple web app. The system also installs PHPMyAdmin for us which takes care of the pesky details involved in interacting with a database.

I’ll wait for the standing ovation for Xampp .. okay enough of that; let’s get in there:

First we visit the Apache friends website and download the relevant DMG image for your Mac Open the image, double click and launch the installer Yep, Xampp is now installed somewhere in your /Applications/XAMPP directory. I'll live you to find out exactly where that is. It's all part of the learning. Knowing where your stuff is helps a lot in wrapping your head around all this new concepts.It takes away a bit of the unknowns for you, and will help settle you in. To launch this little gem of the geek gods, simply open the Xampp controller and start Apache, MySQL, and ProFTD from the controls provided. The indicators will turn green once each is successfully initiated. Just a note, since 5.5.30, Xampp ships with MariaDB instead of MySQL, not a biggy; they’re almost the same.

Wanna test if it worked? open this: http://localhost in your browser ; you should see a page like the one above. Congratulations you have successfully configured a server environment on your local machine!! ... Smiles all around moment right here :)

"The system also installs PHPMyAdmin for us which takes care of the pesky details involved in interacting with a database."

The Village Geek

The next section will deal with setting up LAMP on a Linux/Ubuntu machine. You can skip the next topic if you’re not interested in setting up LAMP on Linux.

Cape Town, South Africa