PHP & Web Development Blogs

PHPUnit is an essential tool for every PHP developers. It is one of those tools that every PHP developer should have installed in their development environment. The problems most first time PHPUnit developers run into are where to install it and how to install it. This quick guide will walk you through the process and answer both questions.

How do I install PHPUnit

The Easy Way

In your project’s root directory use this command.

composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit ^6.0

This command adds PHPUnit to your project as a development dependency. This is the absolute best way to install PHPUnit. It is the best way because this way the version of PHPUnit does not change unless you change it. We specified ^6.0 as the version which means we’ll get all the updates to the 6.0 branch but not 6.1. While BC breaks don’t happen often in PHPUnit, they have happened. If you have a globally installed version of PHPUnit and you upgrade it to a version that breaks BC, you have to go update all of your tests immediately. This is a lot of hassle if you have a lot of projects with a lot of tests. Keeping a copy of PHPUnit installed as a dev requirement in each project means that each project has its own copy that can be upgraded as necessary.

The Hard Way

In a command prompt regardless of where you are in your file system, use this command.

composer global require phpunit/phpunit ^6.0

On MacOS and Linux machines, this will install PHPUnit in ~/.composer/vendor/bin. If you add this directory to your path, then from any project, you can execute PHPUnit. However, as noted above, if you ever upgrade your globally installed packages then you will have problems.

composer global update

Run that when there is a new version of PHPUnit, it will be installed, regardless of whether this will break your existing unit tests on one or more of your projects. Windows users will need to locate the .composer/vendor/bin directory in your user’s home directory.

The “ZOMG why would you do it this way” Way

Here is the old-school use wget and move it into the correct position manually. You can do it this way, but you will have to take care of all upgrades manually as well. If you only have a single project on the computer and you never ever plan on changing the version of PHPUnit….nope, still better to usecomposer require --dev.

wget https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit-6.0.phar

chmod +x phpunit-6.0.phar

sudo mv phpunit-6.0.phar /usr/local/bin/phpunit

phpunit --version

These instructions are of course for MacOS or Linux. Windows user won’t need to do chmod or sudo but will need a BAT file.

That’s it. One of those commands should get you a working copy of PHPUnit on your computer.

Resources:

* Installing PHPUnit
* Composer Introduction (For the Global option)

Today, I will share with you how to create a PDF file from HTML blade file in Laravel 5.7. We will be using dompdf package for generating the PDF file.

In the below example, we will install barryvdh/laravel-dompdf using composer package and thereafter we will add new route url with controller. Then we will create a blade file. Then after we have to just run project with serve and we can check the PDF file is for download.

Download Laravel 5.7

Now I am going to explain the step by step from scratch with laravel installation for dompdf. To get started, we need to download fresh Laravel 5.7 application using command, so open our terminal and run the below command in the command prompt:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

Install laravel-dompdf Package

Now we will install barryvdh/laravel-dompdf composer package by using the following composer command in ourLlaravel 5.7 application.

composer require barryvdh/laravel-dompdf

Then the package is successfully installed in our application, after that open config/app.php file and we need to add alias and service provider.
config/app.php

'providers' => [
....
Barryvdh\DomPDF\ServiceProvider::class,
],
 
'aliases' => [
....
'PDF' => Barryvdh\DomPDF\Facade::class,
]

Create Routes

Now we need to create routes for the items listing. so now open our "routes/web.php" file and we need to add following route.
routes/web.php

Route::get('demo-generate-pdf','HomeController@demoGeneratePDF');

Create Controller

Here,we need to create a new controllerHomeController (mostly it will be there, we can skip this step if we don't need to create a controller) that will manage our pdf generation using the generatePDF() method of route.
app/Http/Controllers/HomeController.php

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use PDF;

class HomeController extends Controller
{
 public function demoGeneratePDF()
 {
 $data = ['title' => 'Welcome to My Blog'];
 $pdf = PDF::loadView('myPDF', $data);
 
 return $pdf->download('demo.pdf');
 }
}

Create Blade File

In the final step, let us create demoPDF.blade.php in the resources/views/demoPDF.blade.php for structure of pdf file and add the following code:
resources/views/demoPDF.blade.php

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hi</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to My BLOG - {{ $title }}</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non
proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>
</body>
</html>

Now run the below command for serve and test it:

php artisan serve

Composer is a must-have tool for every PHP developer these days. This page is a simple breakdown of quick-install instructions.

How do I install composer?
   

. Use PHP to download the composer installer, place it in the current directory, and name it composer-setup.php

    . Use PHP to check the hash of the file you downloaded and compare it to the known value of the hash. You can always find the current value of the hash for the installer on the Composer Public Keys / Signatures page.
   
. Run the setup program to install composer. This does more than just download the latest copy of composer, it also sets up your local ~/.composer directory. This will install composer into the current directory. You can add the --install-dir=DIR to specify where you want composer installed. You can also specify --filename=composer to change the installed filename. You can use anything you like that doesn’t already exist in your specified directory, you don’t have to use the name composer. This is a great way to get rid of the .phar at the end of the name if you don’t like it.
   
. Use PHP to remove the installer from the current directory.

To install composer for PHP you use PHP to download the installer, set a few options, and then actually perform the install.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '55d6ead61b29c7bdee5cccfb50076874187bd9f21f65d8991d46ec5cc90518f447387fb9f76ebae1fbbacf329e583e30') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

Below is a version you can copy ‘n paste.

Breakdown:

Recommended Setup for Linux and macOS:

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '55d6ead61b29c7bdee5cccfb50076874187bd9f21f65d8991d46ec5cc90518f447387fb9f76ebae1fbbacf329e583e30') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

WARNING: Line two IS WHERE IT compares the hasH of the installer you just downloaded to a hard-coded value. The value specified in the script is the value for the current version of the installer as of this writing. If it fails, check the Composer Public Keys / Signatures page and get the latest version. Plug it into the script below and try again.

Windows user, change the --installdir= to a directory in your path.

Recommended Setup for Windows

If you are running Microsoft Windows, the instructions above will work for you as long as you use the proper install paths. You can however download ComposerSetup.exe from the Composer Introduction page. Execute this and it will install composer and set your path so that you can run composer from anywhere. You will have to close your terminal window and open a new one after the install for the path to be updated.

That’s it, you should now have Composer installed.

Composer installation Resources

* Composer Homepage
* Composer Introduction
* Download Composer
* Composer Public Keys / Signatures

Today I am going write a blog on how to Monitor Memory and Disk custom metrics and creating alarm in Ubuntu.

To do this, we can use Amazon CloudWatch, which provides a flexible, scalable and reliable solution for monitoring our server.

Amazon Cloud Watch will allow us to collect the custom metrics from our applications that we will monitor to troubleshoot any issues, spot trends, and configure operational performance. CloudWatch functions display alarms, graphs, custom metrics data and including statistics.

Installing the Scripts

Before we start installing the scripts for monitoring, we should install all the dependent packages need to perform on Ubuntu.

First login to your AWS server, and from our terminal, install below packages

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unzip
sudo apt-get install libwww-perl libdatetime-perl

Now Install the Monitoring Scripts

Following are the steps to download and then unzip we need to configure the Cloud Watch Monitoring scripts on our server:
1. In the terminal, we need to change our directory and where we want to add our monitoring scripts.
2. Now run the below command and download the source:

curl https://aws-cloudwatch.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.2.zip -O

3. Now uncompress the currently downloaded sources using the following commands

unzip CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.2.zip && \

rm CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.2.zip && \

cd aws-scripts-mon

The directory will contain Perl scripts, because of the execution of these scripts only report memory run and disk space utilization metrics will run in our Ubuntu server.
Currently, our folder will contain the following files:
mon-get-instance-stats.pl - This Perl file is used to displaying the current utilization statistics reports for our AWS instance on which these file scripts will be executed.
mon-put-instance-data.pl - This Perl script file will be used for collecting the system metrics on our ubuntu server and which will send them to the Amazon Cloud Watch.
awscreds.template - This Perl script file will contain an example for AWS credentials keys and secret access key named with access key ID.
CloudWatchClient.pm - This Perl script file module will be used to simplify by calling Amazon Cloud Watch from using other scripts.
LICENSE.txt – This file contains the license details for Apache 2.0.
NOTICE.txt – This file contains will gives us information about Copyright notice.
4. For performing the Cloud Watch operations, we need to confirm that whether our scripts have corresponding permissions for the actions:

If we are associated with an IAM role with our EC2 Ubuntu instance, we need to verify that which will grant the permissions to perform the below-listed operations:

cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

cloudwatch:PutMetricData

ec2:DescribeTags

cloudwatch:ListMetrics

Now we need to copy the ‘awscreds.template’ file into ‘awscreds.conf’ by using the command below and which will update the file with details of the AWS credentials.

cp awscreds.template awscreds.conf

AWSAccessKeyId = my_access_key_id

AWSSecretKey = my_secret_access_key

Now we completed the configuration.

mon-put-instance-data.pl

This Perl script file will collect memory, disk space utilization data and swap the current system details and then it makes handling a remote call to Amazon Cloud Watch to reports details to the collected cloud watch data as a custom metrics.

We can perform a simple test run, by running the below without sending data to Amazon CloudWatch

./mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-util --verify --verbose

Now we are going to set a cron for scheduling our metrics and we will send them to Amazon CloudWatch
1. Now we need to edit the crontab by using below command:

 crontab -e

2. Now we will update the file using the following query which will disk space utilization and report memory for particular paths to Amazon CloudWatch in every five minutes:

*/5 * * * * ~/STORAGE/cloudwatch/aws-scripts-mon/mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-util --mem-avail --mem-used --disk-space-util --disk-space-avail --disk-space-used --disk-path=/ --disk-path=/STORAGE --from-cron

If there is an error, the scripts will write an error message in our system log.

Use of Options

--mem-used
The above command will collect the information about used memory and which will send the details of the reports in MBs into the MemoryUsed metrics. This will give us information about the metric counts memory allocated by applications and the OS as used.
--mem-util
The above command will collect the information about memory utilization in percentages and which will send the details of the Memory Utilization metrics and it will count the usage of the memory applications and the OS.
--disk-space-util
The above command will collect the information to collect the current utilized disk space and which will send the reports in percentages to the DiskSpaceUtilization for the metric and for the selected disks.
--mem-avail
The above command will collect the information about the available memory and which will send the reports in MBs to the MemoryAvailable metrics details. This is the metric counts memory allocated by the applications and the OS as used.
--disk-path=PATH
The above command will collect the information and will point out the which disk path to report disk space.
--disk-space-avail
The above command will collect the information about the available disk space and which will send the reports in GBs to the DiskSpaceAvailable metric for the selected disks.
--disk-space-used
The above command will collect the information about the disk space used and which will send the reports in GBs to the DiskSpaceUsed metric for the selected disks.

The PATH can specify to point or any of the files can be located on which are mounted point for the filesystem which needs to be reported.

If we want to points to the multiple disks, then specify both of the disks like below:

--disk-path=/ --disk-path=/home

Setting an Alarm for Custom Metrics

Before we are going to running our Perl Scripts, then we need to create an alarm that will be listed in our default metrics except for the custom metrics. You can see some default metrics are listed in below image:



Once we completed setting the cron, then the custom metrics will be located in Linux System Metrics.

Now we are going to creating the alarm for our custom metrics
1. We need to open the cloudwatch console panel at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/home
2. Now navigate to the navigation panel, we need to click on Alarm and we can Create Alarm.
3. This will open a popup which with the list of the CloudWatch metrics by category.
4. Now click on the Linux System Metrics . This will be listed out with custom metrics you can see in the below pictures






5. Now we need to select metric details and we need to click on the NEXT button. Now we need to navigate to Define Alarm step.



6. Now we need to define an Alarm with required fields

Now we need to enter the Alarm name for identifying them. Then we need to give a description of our alarm.

Next, we need to give the condition with the maximum limit of bytes count or percentage when it notifies the alarm. If the condition satisfies, then the alarm will start trigger.

We need to provide a piece of additional information about for our alarm.

We need to define what are the actions to be taken when our alarm changes it state.

We need to select or create a new topic with emails needed for sending notification about alarm state.
7. Finally, we need to choose the Create Alarm.

So its completed. Now the alarm is created for our selected custom metrics.

Finished!

Now the alarm will be listed out under the selected state in our AWS panel. Now we need to select an alarm from the list seen and we can see the details and history of our alarm.

The following is a sponsored blogpost by Cloudways

Developing an application is not the sole thing you should bank on. You must strive to find the best hosting solution to deploy that application also. The application’s speed is dependent on the hosting provider, that is why I always advise you to go for the best hosting solution to get the ultimate app performance.

Now a days, it is a big challenge to choose any web hosting, as each hosting has its own pros and cons which you must know, before considering it finally for the deployment. I don’t recommend shared hosting for PHP/Laravel based applications, because you always get lot of server hassles like downtime, hacking, 500 errors, lousy support and other problems that are part and parcel of shared hosting.

For PHP applications, you must focus on more technical aspects like caching, configs, databases, etc. because these are essential performance points for any vanilla or framework-based PHP application. Additionally, if the app focuses on user engagement (for instance, ecommerce store), the hosting solution should be robust enough to handle spikes in traffic.

Here, I would like to introduce Cloudways PHP server hosting to you which provides easy, developer and designer friendly managed hosting platform. With Cloudways, you don't need to focus on PHP hosting, but must focus on building your application. You can easily launch cloud servers on five providers including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS and GCE.

Cloudways ThunderStack

Being a developer, you must be familiar with the concept of stack - an arrangement of technologies that form the underlying hosting solution.

To provide a blazing fast speed and a glitch-free performance, Cloudways has built a PHP stack, known as ThunderStack. This stack consists of technologies that offer maximum uptime and page load speed to all PHP applications. Check out the following visual representation of ThunderStack and the constituent technologies:





As you can see, ThunderStack comprises of a mix of static and dynamic caches with two web servers, Nginx and Apache. This combination ensures the ultimate experience for the users and visitors of your application.

Frameworks and CMS

The strength and popularity of PHP lies in the variety of frameworks and CMS it offers to the developers. Realizing this diversity, Cloudways offers a hassle-free installation of major PHP frameworks including Symfony, Laravel, CakePHP, Zend, and Codeigniter. Similarly, popular CMS such as WordPress, Bolt, Craft, October, Couch, and Coaster CMS - you can install these with the 1-click option. The best part is that if you have a framework or CMS that is not on the list, you can easily install it through Composer.

1-Click PHP Server & Application Installation

Setting up a stack on an unmanaged VPS could take an entire day!

When you opt for Cloudways managed cloud hosting, the entire process of setting up the server, installation of core PHP files and then the setup of the required framework is over in a matter of minutes.

Just sign up at Cloudways, choose your desired cloud provider, and select the PHP stack application.





As you can see, your LAMP stack is ready for business in minutes.

Many PHP applications fail because essential services are either turned off or not set up properly. Cloudways offers a centralized location where you can view and set the status of all essential services such as:



* Apache
* Elasticsearch
* Memcached
* MySQL
* PHP-FPM
* Nginx
* New Relic
* Redis
* Varnish





Similarly, you can manage SMTP add-ons without any fuss.

Staging Environment

With Cloudways, you can test your web applications for possible bugs and errors before taking it live.

Using the staging feature, developers can first deploy their web sites on test domains where they can analyze the applications performance and potential problems. This helps site administrators to fix those issues timely and view the application performance in real-time.

A default sub domain comes pre-installed with the newly launched application, making it easy for the administrators to test the applications on those testing subdomains. Overall, it's a great feature which helps developers know about the possible errors that may arise during the live deployment.

Pre-Installed Composer & Git

PHP development requires working with external libraries and packages. Suppose you are working with Laravel and you need to install an external package. Since Composer has become the standard way of installing packages, it comes preinstalled on the Cloudways platform. Just launch the application and start using Composer in your project.

Similarly, if you are familiar with Git and maintain your project on GitHub or BitBucket, you don’t need to worry about Git installation. Git also comes pre-configured on Cloudways. You can start running commands right after application launch.

Cloudways MySQL Manager

When you work with databases in PHP, you need a database manager. On the Cloudways platform, you will get a custom-built MySQL manager, in which you can perform all the tasks of a typical DB manager.




However, if you wish to install and use another database manager like PHPMyAdmin, you can install it by following this simple guide on installing PHPMyadmin.

Server & Application Level SSH

If you use Linux, you typically use SSH for accessing the server(s) and individual applications. A third-party developer requires application and server level access as per the requirements of the client. Cloudways offers SSH access to fit the requirements of the client and users.

PHP-FPM, Varnish & Cron Settings

Cloudways provides custom UI panel to set and maintain PHP-FPM and Varnish settings. Although the default configuration is already in place, you can easily change all the settings to suit your own, particular development related requirements. In Varnish settings, you can define URL that you want to exclude from caching. You can also set permissions in this panel.




Cron job is a very commonly used component of PHP application development process. On Cloudways platform, you can easily set up Cron jobs in just a few clicks. Just declare the PHP script URL and the time when the script will run.

Cloudways API & Personal Assistant Bot

Cloudways provides an internal API that offers all important aspects of the server and application management. Through Cloudways API, you can easily develop, integrate, automate, and manage your servers and web apps on Cloudways Platform using the RESTful API. Check out some of the use cases developed using Cloudways API. You just need your API key and email for authentication of the HTTP calls on API Playground and custom applications.




Cloudways employs a smart assistant named CloudwaysBot to notify all users about server and application level issues. CloudwaysBot sends the notifications on pre-approved channels including email, Slack and popular task management tools such as Asana and Trello.

Run Your APIs on PHP Stack

Do you have your own API which you want to run on the PHP stack? No problem, because you can do that, too with Cloudways! You can also use REST API like Slim, Silex, Lumen, and others. You can use APIs to speed up performance and require fast servers with lots of resources. So, if you think that your API response time is getting slower due to the large number of requests, you can easily scale your server(s) with a click to address the situation.

Team Collaboration

When you work on a large number of applications with multiple developers, you need to assign them on any specific application. Cloudways provides an awesome feature of team collaboration through which you can assign developers to specific application and give access to them. You can use this tool to assign one developer to multiple applications. Through team feature, you can connect the team together and work on single platform. Access can be of different type; i.e. billing, support and console. You can either give the full access or a limited one by selecting the features in Team tab.

Final Words

Managed cloud hosting ensures that you are not bothered by any hosting or server related issues. For practical purposes, this means that developers can concentrate on writing awesome code without worrying about underlying infrastructure and hosting related issues. Do sign up and check out Cloudways for the best and the most cost-effective cloud hosting solution for your next PHP project!