PHP Development Environment

By Sergey Skudaev

The XAMPP installation guide

Download and install XAMPP, an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP, and Perl:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp

Hover your mouse over an image to enlarge it. Click the image to make it small again.

Create a xampp folder in the root directory and save executable xampp-win32-7.1.8-0-VC14-installer.exe in the folder.

Select the executable file, click by right mouse and select "Run as Administrator".

If you have an antivirus software, you may need to pause protection or disable it temporary.

Do not change default selections.

Change the destination directory from C:\Program Files(x86) to C:\xampp

Just click Next

Just click finish. Find XAMPP in your start menu and open.

XAMPP control panel is displayed. Click start Apache then after Apache starts running, click Start MySQL. MySQL should start running.

Open your favorite browser and type in the URL "http://localhost/" The welcome page is displayed.

Click phpMyAdmin link on the left upper corner. phpMyAdmin is started.

If your phpMyAdmin displays error, it may be related to port conflict with another software running on your PC. You may change the default 3306 port used by MySQL in xampp\mysql\bin\my.ini file to the 3307 port.

Restart Apache, MySQL and XAMPP each time after changing a port.

To change port for phpMyAdmin, open config.default.php file located in the "phpMyAdmin\libraries" directory.

Find a line: $cfg['Servers'][$i]['port'] = '' and enter between single quotation marks a mysql port that is displayed on the XAMPP Control Panel.

phpMyAdmin home page. You can click SQL button on the main menu. In the text area, type a query "create database mydb" and click the Go button. The mydb database will be created.

To create a visitor table, select a database on the left and click SQL. In the text area, type or paste a create table statement and click the Go button. The visitors table will be created.

Click the structure button on the main menu and you will see the table structure: the table fields, data type and the size.

To insert a record to the visitors table, select a table on the left and click the Insert button on the main menu. In the list of fields, enter a visitor´s data and click the Go button. The record will be inserted.

Click the Browse button and the records inserted in the table will be displayed.

To export table structure and table data, click the Export button on the main menu. Enter table name in the new template text box, select it in the exiting template list and click Go button.

The Save dialog is displayed. Save the file.


 CREATE TABLE `visitors` (
    `userid` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `lastname` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
    `firstname` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
    `username` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
    `password` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
    `email` varchar(30) DEFAULT NULL,
    `role` varchar(10) DEFAULT NULL,
    `active` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`userid`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

It contents will look like the table statement above.

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The XAMPP installation guide