 | Installation
CakePHP wants to make your life easier, regardless of your level of
experience, by making your applications easier to maintain and quicker
to write. CakePHP is full of cool and useful features. CakePHP wants
to handle your Ajax, your data validation, your sessions. It will even
slice your bread if you can write a plug-into tell it how. But you
can't use CakePHP yet. You need to install it first.
Unpack and install
For the purpose of this tutorial, the entire CakePHP installation
directory should be unpacked within the webroot of your Web server. In
Listing 1, the webroot is /webroot.
Listing 1. Unpacking the CakePHP installation directory
unzip cake_1.2.2.8120.zip
cd cake_1.2.2.8120
mv * /webroot
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Type ls -la /webroot to list the contents of
the webroot and verify that the files have been moved properly. The
output should look something like Listing 2.
Listing 2. Output of the ls command
-rw-r--r-- 1 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 139 2007-12-15 22:50 htaccess
drwxr-xr-x 12 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 app
drwxr-xr-x 7 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 cake
-rw-r--r-- 1 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 2303 2007-12-15 22:50 index.php
drwxr-xr-x 5 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 vendors
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The directory app/tmp needs to be writable by your Web server. Confirm
the permissions on this folder by typing
ls -l app. The output will probably look
similar to Listing 3.
Listing 3. Confirming the folder permissions
-rw-r--r-- 1 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 139 2007-12-15 22:50 .htaccess
drwxr-xr-x 3 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 config
drwxr-xr-x 3 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 controllers
-rw-r--r-- 1 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 953 2007-12-15 22:50 index.php
drwxr-xr-x 3 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 locale
drwxr-xr-x 3 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 models
drwxr-xr-x 2 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 plugins
drwxr-xr-x 5 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 tests
drwxr-xr-x 6 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 3 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 vendors
drwxr-xr-x 8 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 views
drwxr-xr-x 6 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 4096 2007-12-15 22:50 webroot
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The simplest way to accomplish this is probably the most common and
least secure: give write permissions to everyone.
chmod -R 777 app/tmp
ls -l app
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The permissions for the tmp folder should have been updated, as shown
below.
drwxrwxrwx 7 YOURUSER YOURGROUP 2007-12-15 22:50 tmp
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Giving write permissions to everyone is not recommended for
general use. Ideally, you should change the ownership of this folder
to match the user that the Web server uses, or add the user that the
Web server uses to a the group for the directory and add group write
permissions. This tutorial is intended to demonstrate how to use
CakePHP and is not designed to be a guide for building secure
applications. While security should be at the head of any application
development, a full discussion of secure PHP practices is outside the
scope of this tutorial.
For a production installation, change the webroot of the Web server to
app/webroot, which will minimize the amount of code accessible via the
Web browser and help enhance the security of your installation.
Validation 1
In a browser, go to the URL that corresponds with the webroot for your
Web server. For example, if you've installed CakePHP into the webroot
of your localhost, go to http://localhost; you should see the CakePHP
default home page.
Figure 1. The CakePHP default home
page as it should be seen
Note: If the default home page looks more like Figure 2, then
mod_rewrite is not working the way CakePHP
requires. This can sometimes be a problem for first-time users.
Figure 2. The incorrect-looking home
page
Following are some things to verify.
Is your .htaccess file
correct?
You should have gotten an .htaccess file in the CakePHP installation
directory. On most *nix systems, this will be hidden from view by
default. If you do not have the file, check the source you downloaded
or get a fresh update from CakePHP.org. Confirm that the file exists
and is valid by going to the installation directory and running
cat .htaccess. This will display the file's
contents, which should look like Listing 4.
Listing 4. Confirming that the .htaccess file exists
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
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Is mod_rewrite enabled for the
server?
Make sure that mod_rewrite is enabled for
your Web server. For Apache, there are two lines that should
appear in the httpd.conf file. In the LoadModule list, you should see
the following line (or something very close to it):
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/mod_rewrite.so. In the AddModule list, you should see this line (or something very
close): AddModule mod_rewrite.c.
If you cannot find these lines in your httpd.conf file,
mod_rewrite is not enabled. Consult your
server documentation for details on how to do this.
Does the server allow .htaccess
override?
Make sure your Web server is configured to allow .htaccess override.
For Apache, each directory should be defined in the httpd.conf file.
These definitions can look very different from installation to
installation, but you should still see the line AllowOverride All in
the definition. Your definition might look something like Listing 5.
Listing 5. Definitions in the httpd.conf file
<Directory "/webroot">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
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Consult your server documentation for more details about .htaccess
override.
Configuring a
database connection
Now that you've got CakePHP installed and on speaking terms with your
Web server, you need to introduce CakePHP to your database. This
section will cover setting up the database configuration and verifying
that CakePHP likes your database. Tor is going to need a place to
store its user and product data. You'll be soon be creating a users
table to be used to build the login and registration parts of Tor.
Editing the database
configuration file
Setting up your database configuration is pretty darn easy, but before
you start, make sure your database server is running, that you have
created a database for your application, and that you have a username
and password for a user with rights to the database.
To start, make a copy of the app/config/database.php.default file and
save it as app/config/database.php. Do this to preserve a copy of the
original template. Open the file in your favorite text editor and look
for the following section (it should be just near the bottom of the
file).
Listing 6. The app/config/database.php.default file
var $default = array(
'driver' => 'mysql',
'persistent' => false,
'host' => 'localhost',
'login' => 'user',
'password' => 'password',
'database' => 'database_name',
'prefix' => ''
);
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Modify this information to fit your installation:
-
driver
- This can be
mysql,
mysqli,
postgres,
sqlite,
mssql, db2,
oracle,
adodb or
pear-drivername. This tutorial assumes
mysql.
-
persistent
- This field tells CakePHP whether it should use persistent database
connections. This should be true or false. This tutorial assumes
false.
-
host
- This is the hostname of your database server, such as
localhost or
mysql.yourdomain.
-
login
- This is the username for your database login, such as
dbuser.
-
password
- This is the password for your database login, such as
secretsecret.
-
database
- This is the name of the database you wish to use, such as
cakedev.
-
prefix
- Prefix is a string, such as
cp_, that
is prepended to table names for any database call made by CakePHP.
Using a prefix may be necessary if the database is shared among
applications to keep tables from stepping on each other where two
or more applications want a table with the same name, such as
users.
Don't forget to save the file.
Any number of database configurations can be specified in database.php
provided they have distinct names. You can specify which database
configuration the application should use in the models.
Some notes about databases and CakePHP:
- The tables must have a primary key named
id.
- If you include a created or modified column in the
table, CakePHP will automatically populate the field when
appropriate.
- Table names should be plural (users, products, eggs, sodas,
winners, losers). Their corresponding models will have singular
names (user, product, egg, soda, winner, loser).
- If tables are to be related, foreign keys should follow the format
table_id with singular table names. For
example, user_id,
product_id,
egg_id,
soda_id,
winner_id and
loser_id would be foreign keys for the
table's user, product, egg, soda, winner, and loser.
Validation 2
Go back to the URL you used to validate the initial installation. You
should see that the CakePHP default home page has changed to indicate
the status of your database configuration.
Figure 3. CakePHP default home page
has changed to indicate status of database configuration
If the default home page says the database configuration file is not
present, you may have put it in the wrong place or misnamed it. Make
sure the database configuration file is app/config/database.php. If
the default home page says CakePHP is unable to connect to the
database, confirm that the connection information you entered is valid
and retry.
Creating the application
tables
So now CakePHP, your Web server, and your database are all on speaking
terms. Time to roll up your sleeves and get to the real work. Tor
needs a users table.
This table will contain the basic information necessary to identify and
interact with a user. A simple username and password field would
probably suffice, but other information can be useful, such as an
e-mail address (for sending password reset requests), first and last
name (for personalization), and last login date (to help track
inactive accounts). You probably want your username and e-mail fields
to be unique. And don't forget the primary key ID field. The SQL to
create your table might look something like Listing 7.
Listing 7. SQL to create your table
CREATE TABLE 'users' (
'id' INT( 10 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
'username' VARCHAR( 40 ) NOT NULL ,
'password' VARCHAR( 40 ) NOT NULL ,
'email' VARCHAR( 255 ) NOT NULL ,
'first_name' VARCHAR( 40 ) NOT NULL ,
'last_name' VARCHAR( 40 ) NOT NULL ,
UNIQUE (
'username' ,,
'email'
)
) TYPE = MYISAM ;
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Notice that the username,
password,
first_name, and
last_name fields have a maximum character
length of 40. We will enforce this character length in the user model.
The 40-character maximum length, in this case, is entirely arbitrary.
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