Get your Local Web Development Environment Up & Running on macOS High Sierra 10.13
With Apples’ new macOS High Sierra 10.13 available for download, here is how to get the AMP stack up and running on the new macOS. This tutorialwill go through the process on getting Apache, MySQL, PHP (or otherwise known as the ‘AMP’ stack)and phpMyAdmin running on the new mac OS High Sierra.
- Part 1: macOS 10.15 Catalina Web Development Environment Developing web applications on macOS is a real joy. There are plenty of options for setting up your development environments, including the ever-popular MAMP Pro that provides a nice UI on top of Apache, PHP and MySQL. However, there are times when MAMP Pro has slow downs, or out of date versions, or is simply behaving badly due to its.
- The MAMP is a free, open source utility that enables Mac OS X users to install Apache server, MySQL, PHP, eAccelerator and PHPMyAdmin with ease.
This tutorial sets up the AMP stack in more of a traditional way using the loaded Apache and PHP and downloading MySQL and phpMyAdmin.
PHP Installation on Linux or Unix with Apache. PHP Installation on Mac OS X with Apache. PHP Installation on Windows NT/2000/XP with IIS. PHP Installation on Windows NT/2000/XP with Apache. Apache Configuration. If you are using Apache as a Web Server then this section will guide you to edit Apache Configuration Files. Install Apache for Mac OS X. Mac OS is ultimately built on Unix so its very easy to install any Unix supporting softwares. Even better part is that Mac OS X comes with apache web server and we just need to start it and make some changes to setup our development environment. We will start apache server with root user to avoid any permission issues.
Setting Stuff Up
Apache/WebSharing
Web serving is built into High Sierra with Apache app, it is installed ready to be fired up.
This needs to be done in the Terminal which is found in the OS filing system at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal
For those not familiar with the Terminal, it really isn’t as intimidating as you may think, once launched you are faced with a command prompt waiting for your commands – just type/paste in a command and hit enter, some commands give you no response – it just means the command is done, other commands give you feedback.
Using the prefix of sudo is required for commands that have their applications protected in certain folders – when using sudo you will need to confirm with your admin password or iCloud password if set up that way…. lets get to it….
to start Apache web sharing
to stop it
to restart it
To find the Apache version
The Apache version that comes in macOS High Sierra is Apache/2.4.27
After starting Apache – test to see if the webserver is working in the browser – http://localhost – you should see the “It Works!” text.
If you don’t get the localhost test, you can try troubleshooting Apache to see if there is anything wrong in its config file by running
This will give you an indication of what might be wrong.
Document Root
Document root is the location where the files are shared from the file system and is similar to the traditional names of ‘public_html‘ and ‘htdocs‘, macOS has historically had 2 web roots one at a system level and one at a user level – you can set both up or just run with one, the user level one allows multiple accounts to have their own web root whilst the system one is global for all users. It seems there is less effort from Apple in continuing with the user level one but it still can be set up with a couple of extra tweaks in configuration files. It is easier to use the user level one as you don’t have to keep on authenticating as an admin user.
System Level Web Root
– the default system document root is still found at –
http://localhost/
The files are shared in the filing system at –
User Level Root
The other web root directory which is missing by default is the ‘~/Sites’ folder in the User account. This takes a bit longer to set up but some users are very accustomed to using it.
You need to make a “Sites” folder at the root level of your account and then it will work. Once you make the Sites folder you will notice that it has a unique icon which is a throwback from a few versions older. Make that folder before you set up the user configuration file described next.
You have to make a few additional tweaks to get the ~/Sites folder back up and running.
Sites Folder
Add a “username.conf” filed under:
If you don’t already have one (very likely), then create one named by the short username of the account with the suffix .conf, its location and permissions/ownership is best tackled by using the Terminal, the text editor ‘nano‘ would be the best tool to deal with this.
If you would rather edit config files in a text editor as an app I would suggest the free BBEdit which allows you to open hidden system files.
Launch Terminal, (Applications/Utilities), and follow the commands below, first one gets you to the right spot, 2nd one opens the text editor on the command line (swap ‘username‘ with your account’s shortname, if you don’t know your account shortname type ‘whoami‘ the Terminal prompt):
Then add the content below swapping in your ‘username’ in the code below:
Permissions on the file should be:
If not you need to change…
Open the main httpd.conf and allow some modules:
And make sure these modules are uncommented (the first 2 should already be on a clean install):
Whilst you have this file open also to get php running uncomment. (Mentioned also in the PHP part of the article).
And also uncomment this configuration file also in httpd.conf – which allows user home directories.
Save all your changes (Control + O in nano)
Then open another Apache config file and uncomment another file:
And uncomment:
Save all your changes (Control + O in nano)
Restart Apache for the new file to be read:
Then this user level document root will be viewable at:
http://localhost/~username/
You should only see a directory tree like structure if the folder is empty.
Override .htaccess and allow URL Rewrites
If you are going to use the web serving document root at /Library/WebServer/Documents it is a good idea to allow any .htaccess files used to override the default settings – this can be accomplished by editing the httpd.conf file at line 217 and setting the AllowOverride to All and then restart Apache. This is already taken care of at the Sites level webroot by following the previous step.
Also whilst here allow URL rewrites so your permalinks look clean not ugly.
Uncomment in httpd.conf – should be uncommented on a clean install.
PHP
PHP 7.1.7 is a first for macOS and is loaded in this version of macOS High Sierra and needs to be turned on by uncommenting a line in the httpd.conf file.
Use “control” + “w” to search within nano and search for ‘php’ this will land you on the right line then uncomment the line (remove the #):
Write out and Save using the nano short cut keys at the bottom ‘control o’ and ‘control x’
Reload apache to kick in
To see and test PHP, create a file name it “phpinfo.php” and file it in your document root with the contents below, then view it in a browser.
MySQL
MySQL doesn’t come pre-loaded with macOS High Sierra and needs to be dowloaded from the MySQL site.
The latest version of MySQL 5.7.19 does work with the public release of macOS.
If you already have MySQL 5.7 and you have upgraded OS from El Capitan to Sierra I expect that to be ok, but will be interested if anyone comments on that.
Use the Mac OS X 10.12 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive version (works on macOS High Sierra).
If you are upgrading from a previous macOS and have an older MySQL version you do not have to update it. One thing with MySQL upgrades always take a data dump of your database in case things go south and before you upgrade to macOS High Sierra make sure your MySQL Server is not running.
When downloading you don’t have to sign up, look for » No thanks, just take me to the downloads! – go straight to the download mirrors and download the software from a mirror which is closest to you.
Once downloaded open the .dmg and run the installer.
When it is finished installing you get a dialog box with a temporary mysql root password – that is a MySQL root password not a macOS admin password. But I have found that the temporary password is pretty much useless so we’ll need to change it straight away, but first it is better to add mysql commands to your shell path.
You are told:
If you lose this password, please consult the section How to Reset the Root Password in the MySQL reference manual.
Add Mysql to your path
After installation, in order to use mysql commands without typing the full path to the commands you need to add the mysql directory to your shell path, (optional step) this is done in your “.bash_profile” file in your home directory, if you don’t have that file just create it using vi or nano:
The first command brings you to your home directory and opens the .bash_profile file or creates a new one if it doesn’t exist, then add in the line above which adds the mysql binary path to commands that you can run. Exit the file with type “control + x” and when prompted save the change by typing “y”. Last thing to do here is to reload the shell for the above to work straight away.
Change the MySQL root password
Note that this is not the same as the root or admin password of macOS – this is a unique password for the mysql root user.
Stop MySQL
Start it in safe mode:
This will be an ongoing command until the process is finished so open another shell/terminal window, and log in without a password as root:
Change the lowercase ‘MyNewPass’ to what you want – and keep the single quotes.
Start MySQL
Starting MySQL
You can then start the MySQL server from the System Preferences or via the command line.
Or to Command line start MySQL.
To find the MySQL version from the terminal, type at the prompt:
This also puts you in to a shell interactive dialogue with mySQL, type q to exit.
Fix the 2002 MySQL Socket error
Fix the looming 2002 socket error – which is linking where MySQL places the socket and where macOS thinks it should be, MySQL puts it in /tmp and macOS looks for it in /var/mysql the socket is a type of file that allows mysql client/server communication.
phpMyAdmin
First fix the 2002 socket error if you haven’t done so from the MySQL section-
Download phpMyAdmin, the zip English package will suit a lot of users, then unzip it and move the folder with its contents into the document root level renaming folder to ‘phpmyadmin’.
Make the config folder
Change the permissions
Run the set up in the browser
http://localhost/~username/phpmyadmin/setup/ orhttp://localhost/phpmyadmin/setup/
You need to create a new localhost mysql server connection, click new server.
Switch to the Authentication tab and set the local mysql root user and the password.
Add in the username “root” (maybe already populated, add in the password that you set up earlier for the MySQL root user set up, click on save and you are returned to the previous screen.
(This is not the macOS Admin or root password – it is the MySQL root user)
Now going to http://localhost/~username/phpmyadmin/ will now allow you to interact with your MySQL databases.
Permissions
To run a website with no permission issues it is best to set the web root and its contents to be writeable by all, since it’s a local development it shouldn’t be a security issue.
Lets say that you have a site in the User Sites folder at the following location ~/Sites/testsite you would set it to be writeable like so:
If you are concerned about security then instead of making it world writeable you can set the owner to be Apache _www but when working on files you would have to authenticate more as admin you are “not” the owner, you would do this like so:
This will set the contents recursively to be owned by the Apache user.
If you had the website stored at the System level Document root at say /Library/WebServer/Documents/testsite then it would have to be the latter:
Another easier way to do this if you have a one user workstation is to change the Apache web user from _www to your account.
That’s it! You now have the native AMP stack running on top of macOS High Sierra.
I recently purchased brand new MacBook Pro and I had to install NGINX, PHP and MySQL in my MacBook Pro. In this article, I am going to share my experience for how to install NGINX, PHP and MySQL on your Mac. This article is for someone interesting to set-up web development environment, especially for the first time.
Reson I choose Nginx over Apache web server is its light-weight resource utilization and its ability to scale easily. Also, Niginx has grown its popularity during last few years. Furthermore, Nginx is often selected by administrators for its resource efficiency and responsiveness under the heavy load.
My MacBook Pro installed Mac OS High Sierra and it was shipped with pre-installed PHP package. So, depending on your web development environment setup, you may need to upgrade default PHP version to the latest version.
Normally, Mac OS X doesn’t ship with its own copy of MySQL. So, you will have to install MySQL on your local machine.
Also, remember this article only explain to install these required packages on your local machine. Alternatively, you can set up similar development environment by using Docker or Vagrant. I will write another post in this regarding.
Now let’s have a look how to install NGINX, PHP and MySQL on Mac OS local environment.
Install NGINX
I prefer to use Homebrew package manager to install required additional packages on my Mac OS X.
If you haven’t install Homebrew on your Mac, you just need to copy paste following command on your terminal and Homebrew will install on your Mac automatically. Remember you need an Internet connection to download these packages.
Once you installed Homebrew, you can install NGINX by using the following command.
Nginx will set following document root by default. But you can change to any path using nginx.conf file.
NGINX default document root
/usr/local/var/www
Configure NGINX virtual hosts
I have included my pre-configured virtual hosts as a zip file.
So you can download my pre-configured NGINX virtual host files here.
Once you download the zip file, unzip the contents and then you just need to copy into the following path. Furthermore, my NGINX virtual hosts specially configured for developing Magento 1, Magento 2 and WordPress projects in my local.
Step 1 – Rename existing “nginx” folder /usr/local/etc/
Step 2 – Copy downloaded “nginx” folder in to /usr/local/etc/
Step 3 – Change your system username
All the pre-configured NGINX virtual hosts are located under the following path.
/usr/local/etc/nginx/servers
You will find four configuration files under the above path.
- 00_upstream.conf – For Fast CGI upstream
- 10_localhost.com.conf – For Magento 1 hosts
- 20_localhost.com.conf – For Magento 2 hosts
- magestyle.conf – For WordPress and general hosts
Also, you will notice, each virtual host’s document root is defined under the above configuration files.
Update your host file
Also, you will need to update your host file for the custom virtual host names. So you can have a look my host file as an example.
NGINX server state management
Start NGINX Server
Reload NGINX Server
Stop NGINX Server
Test and verify NGINX services
My local configuration examples:
For Magento 1 projects
Local Document Root – /Users/chatura/htdocs/m1-local
Host name – http://m1-local.localhost.com/
Configuration file path – /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/10_localhost.com.conf
For Magento2 projects
Local Document Root – /Users/chatura/htdocs/m2-local/web
Host name – http://m2-local.m2.localhost.com/
Configuration file path – /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/20_localhost.com.conf
For WordPress and other projects
Local Document Root -/Users/chatura/htdocs/wp-test
Host name – http://wp-test.localhost.com/
Local Document Root – /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/magestyle.conf
Install PHP
If you follow the following steps, you can replace default PHP with Homebrew PHP version. Also, you can easily upgrade or switch your PHP version according your project requirement.
Especially I am going use my development setup for Magento 2 development. So I followed the Magento technology stack documentation before decide which PHP version I need to install. So I am going to install PHP 7.1 version in my local environment as per the Magento 2 latest technology stack.
Use following “brew tap” command to allow Homebrew to tap into Homebrew PHP to formulae. Once you’ve done this, you’ve expanded your options of installable PHP versions. So these additional Git repos will be saved inside the (usr/local/Library/Taps) directory,
To check list of available configuration options
Install PHP without Apache and with PHP FPM
Install additonal PHP extensions
Setup PHP CLI binary
In addition, if you want to use the PHP command line tools, you need to update the $PATH environment variable of your shell profile.
If you use the default Bash shell:
If you use ZSH:
If you are not sure which one you use, run following code in your terminal. I am using ZSH and it returns “/bin/zsh”
Configure PHP using PHP-FPM
PHP-FPM is a modern way of running PHP with a process manager and the FastCGI protocol. Also, this enables high performance as well as easy switching between various versions of PHP.
Note: Also you can install many PHP version with Homebrew package manager. You just need to link required PHP version and unlink other PHP versions.
Check Installed PHP version and php.ini file
PHP service management
Install MySQL
Let’s install MySQL server.
Also, you can use the following command to MySQL server gets automatically started and stopped when the Mac is shutdown/powered on.
So, you can start MySQL start service manually using the following command for now.
Php Server For Mac Os High Sierra
MySQL service management
Test MySQL connection
Php Install Mac Os
I hope this article will help you to install Nginx, PHP, MySQL on your Mac OS. Let me know in case you’re stuck at some point or have general feedback. Please feel free to comment below.