Part 1: macOS 10.13 High Sierra 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 However, there are times when MAMP Pro has slow downs, or out of date versions, or is simply behaving badly due to its restrictive system of configuration templates and non-standard builds.

It is times like these that people often look for an alternative approach, and luckily there is one, and it is relatively straight-forward to setup.

In this blog post, we will walk you through setting up and configuring Apache 2.4 and multiple PHP versions. In the second blog post in this two-post series, we will cover MySQL, Apache virtual hosts, APC caching, and Xdebug installation.

XCode Command Line Tools

If you don’t already have XCode installed, it’s best to first install the command line tools as these will be used by homebrew:

$ xcode-select --install

Homebrew Installation

This process relies heavily on the macOS package manager called Homebrew. Using the brew command you can easily add powerful functionality to your mac, but first we have to install it. This is a simple process, but you need to launch your Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) application and then enter:

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Just follow the terminal prompts and enter your password where required. This may take a few minutes, but when complete, a quick way to ensure you have installed brew correctly, simply type:

$ brew --version
Homebrew 1.5.2
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 6286; last commit 2018-01-29)

You should probably also run the following command to ensure everything is configured correctly:

$ brew doctor

It will instruct you if you need to correct anything.

Extra Brew Taps

We are going to use a PHP brews that require an external tap:

$ brew tap homebrew/php

If you already have brew installed, make sure you have the all the latest available brews:

$ brew update

Now you are ready to brew!

Apache Installation

The latest macOS 10.13 High Sierra comes with Apache 2.4 pre-installed, however, it is no longer a simple task to use this version with Homebrew because Apple has removed some required scripts in this release. However, the solution is to install Apache 2.4 via Homebrew and then configure it to run on the standard ports (80/443).

If you already have the built-in Apache running, it will need to be shutdown first, and any auto-loading scripts removed. It really doesn’t hurt to just run all these commands in order – even if it’s a fresh installation:

$ sudo apachectl stop
$ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist 2>/dev/null

Now we need to install the new version provided by Brew:

$ brew install httpd

Without options, httpd won’t need to be built from source, so it installs pretty quickly. Upon completion you should see a message like:

🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/httpd/2.4.29_1: 1,625 files, 26M

Now we just need to configure things so that our new Apache server is auto-started

$ sudo brew services start httpd

You now have installed Homebrew’s Apache, and configured it to auto-start with a privileged account. It should already be running, so you can try to reach your server in a browser by pointing it at http://localhost:8080, you should see a simple header that says “It works!”.

Troubleshooting Tips

If you get a message that the browser can’t connect to the server, first check to ensure the server is up.

$ ps -aef | grep httpd

You should see a few httpd processes if Apache is up and running.

Try to restart Apache with:

$ sudo apachectl -k restart

You can watch the Apache error log in a new Terminal tab/window during a restart to see if anything is invalid or causing a problem:

$ tail -f /usr/local/var/log/httpd/error_log

Apache is controlled via the apachectl command so some useful commands to use are:

$ sudo apachectl start
$ sudo apachectl stop
$ sudo apachectl -k restart

Apache Configuration

Now that we have a working web server, we will want to do is make some configuration changes so it works better as a local development server.

In the latest version of Brew, you have to manually set the listen port from the default of 8080 to 80, so we will need to edit Apache’s configuration file.

/usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

For simplicity we’ll use the built-in TextEditor application to make all our edits. You can launch this from the Terminal by using the open -e command followed by the path to the file:

$ open -e /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Find the line that says

Listen 8080

and change it to 80:

Listen 80

Next we’ll configure it to use the to change the document root for Apache. This is the folder where Apache looks to serve file from. By default, the document root is configured as /usr/local/var/www. As this is a development machine, let’s assume we want to change the document root to point to a folder in our own home directory.

Search for the term DocumentRoot, and you should see the following line:

DocumentRoot "/usr/local/var/www"

Change this to point to your user directory where your_user is the name of your user account:

DocumentRoot /Users/your_user/Sites

You also need to change the <Directory> tag reference right below the DocumentRoot line. This should also be changed to point to your new document root also:

<Directory /Users/your_user/Sites>

In that same <Directory> block you will find an AllowOverride setting, this should be changed as follows:

# AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
# It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
#   AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
#
AllowOverride All

Also we should now enable mod_rewrite which is commented out by default. Search for mod_rewrite.so and uncomment the line by removing the leading #:

LoadModule rewrite_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_rewrite.so

User & Group

Now we have the Apache configuration pointing to a Sites folder in our home directory. One problem still exists, however. By default, apache runs as the user daemon and group daemon. This will cause permission problems when trying to access files in our home directory. About a third of the way down the httpd.conf file there are two settings to set the User and Group Apache will run under. Change these to match your user account (replace your_userwith your real username), with a group of staff:

User your_user
Group staff

Servername

Apache likes to have a server name in the configuration, but this is disabled by default, so search for:

#ServerName www.example.com:8080

and replace it with:

ServerName localhost

Sites Folder

Now, you need to create a Sites folder in the root of your home directory. You can do this in your terminal, or in Finder. In this new Sites folder create a simple index.html and put some dummy content in it like: <h1>My User Web Root</h1>.

$ mkdir ~/Sites
$ echo "<h1>My User Web Root</h1>" > ~/Sites/index.html

Restart apache to ensure your configuration changes have taken effect:

$ sudo apachectl -k restart

Pointing your browser to http://localhost should display your new message. If you have that working, we can move on!

PHP Installation

We will proceed by installing PHP 5.6, PHP 7.0, PHP 7.1 and PHP 7.2 and using a simple script to switch between them as we need.

$ brew install php56 --with-httpd
$ brew unlink php56
$ brew install php70 --with-httpd
$ brew unlink php70
$ brew install php71 --with-httpd
$ brew unlink php71
$ brew install php72 --with-httpd

This may take some time as your computer is actually compiling PHP from source.

Also, you may have the need to tweak configuration settings of PHP to your needs. A common thing to change is the memory setting, or the date.timezone configuration. The php.ini files for each version of PHP are located in the following directories:

/usr/local/etc/php/5.6/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/7.0/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/7.1/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/7.2/php.ini

Let’s switch back to the first PHP version now:

$ brew unlink php72
$ brew link php56

Apache PHP Setup – Part 1

You have successfully installed your PHP versions, but we need to tell Apache to use them. You will again need to edit the /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf file and search for #LoadModule php5_module.

You will notice that each PHP version added a LoadModule entry, however these are all pointing to very specific versions. We can replace these with some more generic paths (exact versions may differ):

LoadModule php5_module        /usr/local/Cellar/php56/5.6.31_7/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
LoadModule php7_module        /usr/local/Cellar/php70/7.0.24_16/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
LoadModule php7_module        /usr/local/Cellar/php71/7.1.10_21/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

Modify the paths as follows:

LoadModule php5_module    /usr/local/opt/php56/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php70/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php71/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php72/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

We can only have one module processing PHP at a time, so for now, comment out all but the php56 entry:

LoadModule php5_module    /usr/local/opt/php56/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php70/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php71/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php72/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

This will tell Apache to use PHP 5.6 to handle PHP requests. (We will add the ability to switch PHP versions later).

Also you must set the Directory Indexes for PHP explicitly, so search for this block:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.html
</IfModule>

and replace it with this:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
</IfModule>

<FilesMatch \.php$>
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Save the file and stop Apache then start again, now that we have installed PHP:

$ sudo apachectl -k stop
$ sudo apachectl start

Validating PHP Installation

The best way to test if PHP is installed and running as expected is to make use of phpinfo(). This is not something you want to leave on a production machine, but it’s invaluable in a development environment.

Simply create a file called info.php in your Sites/ folder you created earlier. In that file, just enter the line:

<?php phpinfo();

Point your browser to http://localhost/info.php and you should see a shiny PHP information page:

If you see a similar phpinfo result, congratulations! You now have Apache and PHP running successfully. You can test the other PHP versions by commenting the LoadModule ... php56 ... entry and uncommenting one of the other ones. Then simply restart apache and reload the same page.

PHP Switcher Script

We hard-coded Apache to use PHP 5.6, but we really want to be able to switch between versions. Luckily, some industrious individuals have already done the hard work for us and written a very handy little PHP switcher script.

We will install the sphp script into brew’s standard /usr/local/bin:

$ curl -L https://gist.github.com/w00fz/142b6b19750ea6979137b963df959d11/raw > /usr/local/bin/sphp
$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sphp

Check Your Path

Homebrew should have added its preferred /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin to your path as part of its installation process. Quickly test this by typing:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

If you don’t see this, you might need to add these manually to your path. Depending on your shell your using, you may need to add this line to ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.zshrc. We will assume you are using the default bash shell, so add this line to a your .profile (create it if it doesn’t exist) file at the root of your user directory:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH

At this point, I strongly recommend closing ALL your terminal tabs and windows. This will mean opening a new terminal to continue with the next step. This is strongly recommended because some really strange path issues can arise with existing terminals (trust me, I have seen it!).

Apache PHP Setup – Part 2

Although we configured Apache to use PHP earlier, we now need to change this again to point the PHP module to a location used by the PHP switcher script. You will again need to edit the /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf file and search for the LoadModule php text that you edited earlier.

You must replace the current block of LoadModule entries (including any commented out ones):

LoadModule php5_module    /usr/local/opt/php56/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php70/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php71/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
#LoadModule php7_module    /usr/local/opt/php72/libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

with this:

# Brew PHP LoadModule for `sphp` switcher
LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/lib/libphp5.so
#LoadModule php7_module /usr/local/lib/libphp7.so

Testing the PHP Switching

After you have completed these steps, you should be able to switch your PHP version by using the command sphpfollowed by a two digit value for the PHP version:

$ sphp 70

You will probably have to enter your administrator password, and it should give you some feedback:

$ sphp 70
PHP version 70 found
Unlinking old binaries...
Linking new binaries...
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/php70/7.0.27_19... 17 symlinks created
Linking new modphp addon...
/usr/local/lib/libphp7.so
Fixing LoadModule...
Updating version file...
Restarting homebrew Apache...
Done.

PHP 7.0.27 (cli) (built: Jan 29 2018 15:33:17) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies

Test to see if your Apache is now running PHP 7.0 by again pointing your browser to http://localhost/info.php. With a little luck, you should see something like this:

Updating PHP and other Brew Packages

Brew makes it super easy to update PHP and the other packages you install. The first step is to update Brew so that it gets a list of available updates:

$ brew update

This will spit out a list of available updates, and any deleted formulas. To upgrade the packages simply type:

$ brew upgrade

Activating Specific/Latest PHP Versions

Due to the way our PHP linking is set up, only one version of PHP is linked at a time, only the current active version of PHP will be updated to the latest version. You can see the current active version by typing:

$ php -v

And you can see the specific versions of PHP available by typing:

$ brew info php70
homebrew/php/php70: stable 7.0.27 (bottled), HEAD
PHP Version 7.0
...

You will see all the versions of PHP 7.0 brew has available and then you can switch to a specific version by typing:

$ brew switch php70 7.0.26

OK, that wraps up Part 1 of this 3 part series You now have a fully functional Apache 2.4 installation with a quick-and-easy way to toggle between PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2. Check out Part 2 to find out how to setup your environment with MySQL, Virtual Hosts, APC caching, YAML, and Xdebug. Also take a gander at Part 3 to find out how to setup SSL for your Apache Virtual Hosts.