Zenias box for CakePHP 3.2.x

Zenias is a work in progress for FreeCodeCamp, an opensource learning platform for programmers.

Its goal is to give access to vagrant virtual machines configured for a lot of languages and ready to use with GitHub and Heroku.

Filesystem

The document root of the Apache server is located in the /vagrant/www/webroot directory on the guest box.

The /vagrant/www folder is a shared folder: so you will find its content on the hosting machine in the <path-to-your-Zenias-CakePHP-project>/www folder. This is the root of the Cake3 app.

Packages

This virtual machine has been created with the following php extensions:

php5
php5-cli
php5-pgsql
php5-sqlite
php5-intl
php5-mcrypt
php5-apcu
php5-gd
phpunit

PostgreSQL is the database server:

postgresql
postgresql-contrib

Of course, git and the heroku-toolbelt are present too.

Database configuration

Local

This machine is setup with two postgreSQL databases: my_app, and my_app_test. The last one is meant to be used if you run phpunit tests against your code.

The default configuration to access your databases are:

host: localhost
db name : my_app (or my_app_test)
user: vagrant
password: vagrant

Heroku

To use a postgreSQL database on Heroku, you will need the Heroku-Postgres addon. You can enable it using the toolbelt with this command: heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

Heroku uses environment variables, so when you want to deploy your application on it, you have to use this configuration:

// Use the DATABASE_URL environment variable
$db = parse_url(getenv('DATABASE_URL'));

// Then, access the properties like this:
$host =     $db['host'];
$username = $db['user'];
$password = $db['pass'];
$database = ltrim($db["path"],'/');

For your comfort, the same environment variable has been setup for the my_app database. That way, you don't have to bother on the differences of configuration between this virtual machine and heroku.

Pushing your commits to Heroku

A simple step by step method to push your website to heroku:

# You must be in the /vagrant/www dir:
cd /vagrant/www

# Init a git repo if not already done:
git init

# Commit your changes:
git add .
git commit -m 'Initial commit'

# Create a heroku app:
heroku create

# Push the site:
git push heroku master

# Optionnal: enable postgreSQL on Heroku:
heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

# Test the heroku box :
heroku open

Side notes:

There is an empty composer.json file in the www directory by default. This file tells Heroku that your application is a PHP application.

The Procfile is a file for Heroky to know what type of webserver is needed (in our case, Apache). Zeus PHP - CakePHP3

Notes

For now, cache is disabled on Heroku. You can help me with this issue (#2)

mtancoigne/zenias-box-php-cake3