Set up a development environment with the latest Cerb build

[jstanden]

Introduction

You can test the latest build of Cerb (or any former version) in a development environment.

This is currently the best way to help test Cerb 10.0.

Requirements

You'll need:

• PHP 7.4+ installed on your development machine
• MySQL 5.6+ (or compatible) either installed locally or remotely accessible
• Git
• Composer

When possible, use a package manager like Homebrew on macOS, or apt/yum on Linux.

Installation

Database

Log in to the MySQL console (or use a tool like phpMyAdmin).

Create a new database

CREATE DATABASE cerb_dev CHARACTER SET utf8;

Create a new user

CREATE USER cerb_dev@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 's3cr3t';

Grant permissions

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON cerb_dev.* TO cerb_dev@localhost;

Filesystem

Create a directory

Choose a location on your filesystem to install Cerb. This doesn't need to be in a web server path since we'll be using the built-in PHP webserver.

mkdir -p /path/to/cerb/

cd /path/to/cerb/

Download the files from GitHub

The jstanden/cerb GitHub repository is for development builds, while cerb/cerb-release has stable releases.

Install Cerb using Git:

git clone https://github.com/jstanden/cerb.git cerb

cd cerb

Install dependencies

The cerb/cerb-release repository includes dependencies, but with jstanden/cerb you'll need to install them yourself.

Use Composer to install the dependencies:

composer install

Run the unit tests

You can run the unit tests to verify your environment is configured properly.

composer test

Start the built-in PHP webserver

You don't need Nginx, Apache, or IIS in a development environment. You can use the built-in PHP webserver.

php -S localhost:8080

Run the guided installer

Open a web browser and navigate to: http://localhost:8080/

Run through the guided installer.

Database

When prompted for the database details:

Field	Value
Driver:	MySQLi
Engine:	InnoDB
Host:	localhost (or your external hostname)
Name:	cerb_dev
User:	cerb_dev
Password:	s3cr3t (or whatever password you set up earlier)

Outgoing mail

When prompted for outgoing mail details, you can select None for Mail Transport. This will prevent your development environment from sending live email.

Packages

When prompted for a package, select Demo.

Log in

At the end of the installer you'll be redirected to the login form. Use the new user you created during installation.

You're now ready to start testing and development! You can run through the guides and tutorials for ideas.

Sharing access to development with ngrok

During development and testing you may need to share access to your development environment.

For instance, you may need to test single sign-on (SSO) functionality, use an OAuth2-based connected service, or test webhooks.

We recommend using ngrok in these situations.

Once ngrok is installed, you can create a temporary URL with SSL support to share with this command:

ngrok http localhost:8080

Your URL will look like https://a1b2c3d4e5f6.ngrok.io/ and you can use it like normal in place of localhost. Keep in mind it's a temporary URL meant to be used briefly for testing. The next time you start ngrok you'll get a different random URL.

Recommendations

If you decide to work with the code, we highly recommend using phpStorm as your editor.

[jstanden]

We now recommend using our preconfigured Docker container instead.