Forum Moderators: coopster
been a while. Greetings all around.
1) Server Package
A friend of mine, mac user, wants to learn some php. Need an xampp - like thingie. Except for an Intel Mac.
Mac OS xampp package is labelled with an "experimental" warning so I guessed some of you good folks here could help. The one I've heard about is at [entropy.ch...] . This page also mentions that Apple has a PHP module already in the Mac OS but for some reason php dev's don't want to use it.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to do the install for him, the guy isn't really a programmer, so a nice "wrapup" xampp like thing would be the best. If you have good experiences with xampp, I'd also like to hear that. Didn't find a PHP for mac thread in the library so I ask here.
2) Book
It's been ages and ages since I've looked into print books on PHP but I'd like to recommend a real, "on paper" book to this guy. I found that this helped my own learning process enormously. Would want to recommend him something written post-2002 or so (yeah, ancient history I know) - basically one that's current enough to tell people to use mysql_real_escape_string() to prevent sql injection. He has no previous programming experience.
Why not just check the library thread? The one re. PHP reading material, when it comes to an introductory book, is dated 2003. It's nearly 2007, chums. We need to think about this every few years. Also: the one Rasmus Lehrdorf wrote a few years back struck me as good. Would this be a good suggestion for a beginner, without any previous programming experience?
Warm regards,
Minck
Security:
We have also a ton of good threads about injection, form validation and more "Goodies" :)
MAC
I am not a MAC user however MAC and Linux have a great relationship (I think)
so why not install a nice Suze package or if you may find one of the last RH9
Both packs include indeed PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin etc...
plus a great PHP editor named Quanta
The MySQL installation process is a bit rougher and includes some command line work to properly secure the install. (Added: Entropy also has good instructions for installing mysql.)
If you want just one install for a test server on a Mac then I'd recommend MAMP [mamp.info]. Be warned, the MAMP installation must not be used as a live webserver! That's one way that the entropy build beats MAMP, you can actually use it in the wild.
Warm regards,
minck
Why not just check the library thread? The one re. PHP reading material, when it comes to an introductory book, is dated 2003. It's nearly 2007, chums. We need to think about this every few years.
Point taken, but many of these authors will update the books with revisions from year to year so be sure to check for that when looking up the reference materials. Online resources that are kept up to speed are obviously the PHP online manual [php.net] and Zend [zend.com]. Zend does a good job of putting tutorials and examples out there from the development community.
nb henry0 : loads of people are installing Ubuntu on Mac's, Ubuntu also seems to be the distro of choice for some mac gurus like Mark Pilgrim - tons of people on ubuntuforums.org talking about ubuntizing their macs.
Gregg out of curiosity could you install a Suze or RH distro on a Mac?
I don't have a *nix background so I don't mess around with that stuff very often. I did install Fink on my mac [fink.sourceforge.net] and used that to install a few things which all went well. As far as installing different distros, I'm ignorant enough to not have a clue of even what terminology to use. :)
The PHP supplied by Apple runs months behind on updates. They did upgrade to 4.4.4 in their last update, but it was months after the Aug 16th release at php.net. I cannot imagine wanting to expose something like that.
I just checked my finkcommander and it has nothing for php at all.
The Apple supplied php works on the command line to give me a phpinfo(). Development behind a firewall should be safe enough, but I'd suggest intimate knowledge of OS X before running it on an exposed server.
[My servers don't run on OS X]
