Chapter 2. Getting Started

If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.

—Linus Torvalds

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

  • Setting up the hosting environment.

  • Installing and configuring frameworks.

  • Creating a Hello World application.

  • Using integrated development environments (IDEs).

Before you start developing applications with the frameworks, you need to follow a few simple steps. Web applications cannot operate alone; they need to be placed in a special hosting environment. This chapter will show you how to install and configure all software required to get your frameworks going and let you produce working web apps.

Web applications and web frameworks are system-independent, but must be configured properly for the hosting environment they're in. We will show you how to set up workspaces for Windows 7 64-bit, Ubuntu Desktop 10.04.1 64-bit and Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Of course, these instructions should work for most related operating systems such as Windows Vista or other flavors of Linux.

REQUIREMENTS

In order to successfully build web applications with web frameworks you need the following server software:

  • An HTTP server that accepts incoming connections and returns displayed websites

  • A relational database based on SQL for persistent storage of all kinds of data

  • A PHP interpreter to turn your PHP code into system calls, database queries, and dynamic web page content

To run the application on the client side, you just need a web browser. Examples presented in this book were tested ...

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