For some reason, exporting a database from phpMyAdmin inserts garbage after EVERY LINK in the database content. So if you have a database row with <a href="mylink"> in the data, it will end up looking something like <a href="mylink?phpMyAdmin=hxLEzQ1rOQcEE5fSSzkpIuPI8E7"> after export. Obviously, this causes all kinds of issues.

The only way I’ve found to stop this behavior is to NOT check “Save as file” when exporting your database. Just click “Go” and let the dump print to screen. Then copy/paste it into a text file (save as .sql) and import that into your database. If the export is too large to print to screen, you’ll have to manually do a search and replace on the resulting .sql file. The hash that comes after ?phpMyAdmin= is different on every export, but luckily it’s the same in each dump file – meaning it’s relatively easy to find it and replace it.

Here’s how to create a link to a stylesheet and set the media type to “print”:

$html->css(array('filename'), 'stylesheet', array('media' => 'print'));

That will output the following code:

<link href="/css/filename.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" />

Hope that helps the next person trying to figure this one out.

The PHP installation is missing some key extensions, like PostgreSQL support and the GD library to name a few. But the majority of commonly used extensions are ready to go. Marc Liyanage is already on the case and working out the kinks for his own installer including those additions. The only thing missing at this point is MySQL support for Leopard. As of this writing, there is no installer available yet.

The rest of this post assumes you are working from a clean install or an “archive and install” of 10.5. I’m not sure what the Apache configuration files may look like if you simply upgraded from 10.4 or 10.3 – if they are clean this should work just fine.

Open the Apache configuration file (I’m using TextMate, which is where the ‘mate’ command comes from):
$ mate /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
and scroll to line 114 – it should look like this:
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
Just remove the comment:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

To enable Virtual Hosts, uncomment line 461:
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
and add your own directories in your /etc/apache2/users/you.conf file. Similar to the 10.4 configuration, change the first two lines (inside <Directory "/Users...>) like so:
Options All
AllowOverride All
and add your Virtual Host directives after that:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites/devsite
ServerName devsite
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache:
$ sudo apachectl restart
and you’re all set.

The only thing left to do is update your hosts file:
$ mate /etc/hosts
and add whatever you used for your ServerName after the other entries:
127.0.0.1 devsite

Enjoy!

Now I need to figure out if those rumors of Ruby on Rails out of the box are true…

Using a few built-in tools in OS X, I’ve found a great way to develop sites as Virtual Hosts on Apache. If you are a web developer working on a Mac and you need to develop sites using root relative paths without adding a base href tag to every page on your site, this tutorial should help tremendously. Here’s how it works:

First, make sure you’ve got PHP and MySQL installed – those are the only two things you should need to install outside of the stock OS X configuration.

Next, follow this tutorial on enabling mod_rewrite on OS X that I’ve written previously.

The rest will involve some basic command line use, but it’s pretty painless. As mentioned in the mod_rewrite tutorial, I highly recommend TextMate for editing the configuration files. If you’re a UNIX purist, there’s always vi.

For this example, create a new folder in your /Users/yourname/Sites folder called devsite and place some files there (a simple html or php file with something to output in a browser will do).

1. Open your httpd.conf file and enable Virtual Hosts:
   $ mate /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
   Around line 1063 (almost at the bottom of the file), you should find and uncomment this line:
   NameVirtualHost *:80
2. Open your users.conf file and add a Virtual Host directive:
   $ mate /etc/httpd/users/yourname.conf
   After the <Directory>...</Directory> portion, add the following:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

   <VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/yourname/Sites/devsite
ServerName devsite
</VirtualHost>

   Keeping the localhost portion at the top will still allow you to view the root of the server and anything in it’s directory at http://localhost.

3. Open your hosts file and add your new site name to bypass DNS:
   $ mate /etc/hosts
   Make sure these three lines stay at the top:
   127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
   And add this line after it:
   127.0.0.1 devsite
4. Restart Apache
   $ sudo apachectl restart

You can now view your local files in your browser at http://devsite.

Let’s step back and look at what we’ve done and why this is so useful.

Most likely, until now, you were viewing local development sites by going to something like http://localhost/~yourname/devsite/fancy/url (or 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost) and doing anything with mod_rewrite meant lots of base href tags and RewriteBase configurations, which in turn meant lots of ../../ paths before your images or included scripts to make things work. Now, viewing the same files in your browser is as easy as http://devsite/fancy/url and all of your paths can begin with a single slash ( / ) meaning it will still work the same when you migrate your site to the live server. Root relative paths are a life saver – and this setup makes it possible.

It’s also useful for quick access to commonly used tools, like phpMyAdmin. What I’ve done is install phpMyAdmin in /Users/me/Sites/phpMyAdmin and set up a Virtual Host like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Users/me/Sites/phpMyAdmin
ServerName admin
</VirtualHost>

In the /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 admin

And I can always get to my phpMyAdmin install by simply typing http://admin into the browser.

The reason http://admin works is because most operating systems (even Windows!) will look at the local hosts file first before requesting information from DNS servers. Apache is told to handle requests to http://admin through the Virtual Host we set up. And all of this is done without www’s or .com’s.

By now you should realize that you can add as many Virtual Hosts as you like for as many sites as you need. All you need is these three commands:
$ mate /etc/httpd/users/yourname.conf
$ mate /etc/hosts
$ sudo apachectl restart

This can also be done on Windows, but it takes a little more work, and would of course work the same as described above on Linux/UNIX. If anyone would find it useful, let me know and I’ll post a new tutorial on the same method for Windows developers.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)ablogapart.org [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://michaelkrol.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This reference was extremely helpful.

This RewriteRule lives in the .htaccess file at ablogapart.org and tells any request coming in to that domain to swap ablogapart.org out and replace it with michaelkrol.com. This includes ANYTHING after the trailing slash, like a direct link to a previous post. So http://ablogapart.org/this/direct/link gets sent properly to http://michaelkrol.com/this/direct/link

The important part is the [R=301] which sends a 301 (Permanent) Redirect header. That tells search engines that the page has moved permanently.

Just imagine what you’d have to go through setting up individual forwarding links…

mysqldump -u username -p -h dbserver.host.com --compatible=mysql40 dbname > filetosave.sql

The --compatible command was added because the database server was running MySQL 4.1 and we needed the export for MySQL 4.0.

After some tinkering and futzing around we realized that the Windows line breaks that we had after the headers (\r\n) were the problem. Here’s an example:

This will show up as two line breaks in gmail and trash your HTML formatting:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";

This, however, will fix the problem and show up in gmail just fine:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";

I’m sure if you were sending mail from a Windows server this may not be the case, but for those on a Unix box, just stick with \n. Google will thank you by displaying your HTML email the way it was meant to be displayed – without raw code!

To enable mod_rewrite:

1. Open /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
   (I highly recommend TextMate – from the command line you can simply type this:
   $ mate /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
   or use the old standards: vi, vim, whathaveyou)
2. Go to line 223 (if your config file just so happens to jive with mine) and uncomment the following line:
   LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/httpd/mod_rewrite.so
   (mind the wrap)
3. Go to line 267 and uncomment the following line:
   AddModule mod_rewrite.c
4. Scroll down to line 408 and change the line to read:
   AllowOverride All
   (Some server admins will tell you this may not be the best idea for hosting a live site, but I’m assuming you’re using this for local development only, right?)
5. Uncomment line 454:
   AccessFileName .htaccess
6. Restart Apache:
   $ sudo apachectl restart

At this point you should have mod_rewrite happily fixing your ugly URL’s in the /Library/WebServer/Documents directory, but it’s not working in your /Users/you/Sites directory. What gives? Here’s the trick:

1. Open the yourname.conf file in the /etc/httpd/users folder.
2. Change the first two lines to this:
   Options All
AllowOverride All
3. Give Apache another bounce:
   $ sudo apachectl restart

You should now be seeing friendly url’s in your very own Sites directory.