Webserver setup with XAMMP for Mac

July 19, 2013

Updated 2013-12-11

I use XAMPP as a web server for the time being. I wrote down the installation process when I configured it on my new computer.

It addresses som issues I had when installing XAMMP, and also explains how to store your websites inside a Dropbox folder, instead of the default htdocs/.

The directories written down, such as /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/ can of course differ, and you have to look up where your files are installed.

Step by step

Download XAMPP
Install XAMPP (Instructions on the website)
Make the htdocs point to your Dropbox folder (Optional)
- cd /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/
- Change name of the default htdocs folder, e.g htdocs-old. mv htdocs/ htdocs-old/
- Create a symbolic link named htdocs, pointing to where you want to have your Sites. ln -s ~/Dropbox/Sites/ htdocs
Restart the web server.
Visit http://localhost
- If you get 403, you have to change User/Group in httpd.conf, located in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/etc/. Change these to your username, and probably staff as group
Fix the “Session token” problem when trying to access phpmyadmin
- Open /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/etc/php.ini
- Locate session.save_path = "/tmp" and uncomment that
Create virtual hosts, and hosts
- Include etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf in httpd.conf
- Create a virtual host entry in httpd-vhosts.conf for the general localhost
- Also add a DNS entry to /private/etc/hosts to map the ServerName to your local IP, 127.0.0.1
Enable Gzip Compression (Read instructions below)

/private/etc/hosts

File: /private/etc/hosts

# Setup localhost
127.0.0.1	localhost

# Own projects
127.0.0.1 pudge.lcl
127.0.0.1 wordpress.lcl

# Clients
127.0.0.1 clientname.lcl
127.0.0.1 dev.anotherclient.lcl

etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

File: /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

localhost entry

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot "/Users/victormeyer/Dropbox/Sites"
    <Directory "/Users/victormeyer/Dropbox/Sites">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes execCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow From All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

custom host entry

Replace yourwebsite with whatever you name your website.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yourwebsite.lcl
    DocumentRoot "/Users/victormeyer/Dropbox/Sites/yourwebsite"
    <Directory "/Users/victormeyer/Dropbox/Sites/yourwebsite">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow From All
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog "logs/yourwebsite.lcl-error_log"
</VirtualHost>

XAMPP/xamppfiles/etc/extra/httpd-xampp.conf

File: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/etc/extra/httpd-xampp.conf

    #
    # Enable gzip compression
    # <http://www.mydigitallife.info/configure-and-enable-gzip-compression-with-mod_deflate-to-speed-up-apache-and-save-bandwidth/
    #
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom_xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-fastphp
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-eruby
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml

MongoDB Support

Read http://www.php.net/manual/en/mongo.installation.php#mongo.installation.osx. Basically download the drivers, and add mongo as an php extension, by including the following line to your php.ini.

extension=mongo.so

cURL issue - cacert.pem

When I was working with the Twitter API, it all of a sudden stopped working, not knowing why really, I found that it had something to do with cURL permissions. I read https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php/issues/39 and https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php/issues/21#issuecomment-23699461 who had the same problem. The solution was to download cacert.pem from http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html and reference it in your php.ini, like so:

; issue with cURL
; https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php/issues/21#issuecomment-23699461
; Added 2013-12-11
curl.cainfo=/Users/victormeyer/bin/cacert.pem

Extra tips and tricks

Add shortcuts to vhosts, hosts and logs

Add the following lines to your ~/.bash_profile, where slime is my text editor of choise; Sublime Text 2. After you’ve added these lines, restart the terminal and try them out by just typing the alias (e.g hosts) and hit Enter.

# Sublime Text 2 alias
alias slime='open -a "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app"'

# Shortcuts
alias hosts="slime /private/etc/hosts;"
alias vhosts="slime /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf;"
alias logs="slime /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/logs";