While I was at zendcon I needed to setup my macbook with a typical apache/php/mysql server, but I was unsatisfied with both the default server that apple included and with the install system provided by XAMPP. I’ve since setup a server on both my MacBook and my iMac.

In order to get support for mysql as well as tools necessary for compiling, you need to install the apple developer tools. Check your original mac disc as you may already have a copy.

Anyway, on with our install:

Apache

First, download the latest version of the apache httpd web server.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-module=so --enable-module=rewrite

Then, run the standard make, sudo make install.

MySQL

Then download the latest mysql source file. Make sure you download the source “Compressed GNU TAR archive (tar.gz)” as we’ll need to custom compile it.

However, PHP5 no longer includes mysql shared libraries needed during the configure process. To get these, download the source file for the mysql version you just installed. Once downloaded, decompress it and run the following:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-unix-socket-path=/usr/local/mysql/run/mysql_socket --with-mysqld-user=mysql --with-comment --with-debug

make

sudo make install

sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_install_db --force

sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/run
sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/data

sudo chgrp -R mysql /usr/local/mysql

sudo chown -R mysql /usr/local/mysql/run /usr/local/mysql/var /usr/local/mysql/data

Then start the server with:

sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

zlib

Then, install zlib if it’s not already installed on your system. Download zlib, and it should be a basic ./configure, make, sudo make install process.

Once zlib is installed, make sure you know the path as we’ll need it during the php configure process.

PHP

Next, download the latest php package. Decompress it, and now we’re ready to configure.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-cli --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-zlib-dir=/usr/local --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs

Then, run make and sudo make install to complete the process.

Restart apache and test everything out. If php didn’t do it automatically, add in AddType application/x-httpd-php .php to your httpd.conf file - commonly located in /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf.

Then, start your webserver.

sudo /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start

And finally, once everything is done you’ll want to setup your account to properly allow access to mysql and apache commands. Just run the following to add their paths to your bash profile:

echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/apache/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile

Many of my clients need a quick backup solution before we implement anything on a larger more permanent scale. I wrote this simple script that simply make a copy of a database and then created a timestamped tarball of the file.

#!bin/sh

date=`date +%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M`

cd /my/path/for/backups/

mysqldump -umy_user -p”mypass” my_database > $date.sql

tar -zcvf $date.tgz *.sql

# uncomment this line to import the sql into another database, for example as a mirror
#mysql -umy_user -p”mypass” mirror_database < $date.sql

rm *.sql

Then, just setup a cron job to run this at whichever interval you want this to run.

I’ve come to design every database table with an auto-increment id field that is a primary key. However, sometimes I work on projects where tables have no such column and may have duplicate rows. In order to drop the existing primary key definitions I run:

[mysql]
ALTER TABLE mytable DROP PRIMARY KEY;
[/mysql]

Then, I add a new one:

[mysql]
ALTER TABLE `mytable` ADD `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY FIRST ;
[/mysql]

I’m still rather disappointed with my options for weighting random results in MySQL, but I’ve done the best I can do with it. It’s more about figuring out what numbers you use for the weighting rather than the calculation itself. The query itself ends with:

[mysql]
ORDER BY RAND() * weight_fieldname
[/mysql]

Now, my possible weights from weight_fieldname are 5, 20, 100. 5 is the default weight for every record - 20 increases the chances of the record a bit and 100 pretty much sets the record as an exclusive result. Now, if you only have a single weight applied then setting it to 0 will reduce the weight of an item, however this is very difficult when you start having multiple weights.

One additional problem is that if you have a serious amount of records, using ORDER BY RAND() is going to be a performance hit.