Server Emulation

Best way to test PHP-mySQL

[dvduval]

Is there an easy way to emulate either:
1) Apache PHP mySQL?
2) Linux PHP mySQL?
I've made several attempts to install these things on my home computer with little success. Is there maybe a product that simply installs all 3? I just want it for testing purposes.

[globay]

try PHPdev firepages.com.au

it is really easy to install!

[benihana]

there is a package that installs the three quite simply (on my w2k machine anyway)

having just read another post about improving the quality of threads im not sure if i should post the link or sticky you or what....

....firepages.com.au

there, i did it, im sure this will get edited if that was the wrong thing to do :(

[edit]damn to slow[/edit]

[jpjones]

Another idea is that you could go the whole hog and emulate a PC on your desktop, through such packages as VMWare and Virtual PC.

Then install one of the later Linux distributions from RedHat and you'll have a complete working Apache/PHP/MySQL installation ready for your tests.

HTH,
JP

[le_gber]

also try [webattack.com...]

for php triad,not sure it install the latest php though

leo

[dvduval]

If I am able to complete an install of Red Hat Linux, is php and mysql pre-configured and ready to go? Is it as easy as adding the files and surfing to localhost in the browser? Or is it more complicated than than?

Thanks for the firepages link! I'm going to try that when I get home tonite.

[griz_fan]

the default install of Redhat (at least version 8, the last i did) doesn't install and configure all you need. You will need to do a custom install in order to ensure you get all you need. This is especially true of MySQL. If memory serves, RedHat will install Postgres (sp?) SQL by default, not MySQL. It's actually pretty easy to customize this during the setup, though.
But, as several other people have suggested, there are several good Apache/PHP/MySQL install kits available for Windows. Firepages is really nice, and I'm currently using FoxServ version 3 (I had some problems with 3.1, but those may be resolved by now). All of these are a breeze to install and don't work their way into the Windows registry, so they play well with other programs.
I chose FoxServ over Firepages because FoxServ takes you through setting up a MySQL username and password during install, while when I installed Firepages, it used the root user credentials. I found that being able to specify my own user name and password made things a lot easier for testing PHP scripts and simulating a web server environment. I'm sure you can change the default user name and password setup by firepages, but I liked the fact that FoxServ had this ready out of the box...
Hotscripts has a section for all the various Apache/PHP/MySQL kits available. I'd recomend setting these up in Windows, unless you're already comfortable with Linux.