Are you all excited, as we are, to get started? Well, before we start writing some code, we have a few things we need to do first. These first couple of chapters may be light on code, but are rich in concepts and ideas that you will need on your journey to master jQuery Mobile.
Before we begin, let's talk briefly about what jQuery Mobile is and, more importantly, what it isn't. It is an extension of jQuery that will allow you to create cross-browser web applications and websites that will look the same, regardless of the mobile browser used to view them and the underlying mobile OS. jQuery Mobile provides wide browser and device coverage using progressive enhancement, making your website accessible on the widest range of devices and browsers. It also enhances the form inputs and UI widgets to be touch-friendly. It is not a framework that will allow you to build native applications, but you can use this framework to build hybrid mobile applications. In one of the last chapters of this book, we will look at using one such framework—Apache's Cordova.
How do I install XAMPP for Mac OS X? To install XAMPP, follow these steps: Open the DMG-Image. Double-click the image to start the installation process. XAMPP is now installed below the /Applications/XAMPP directory. Does XAMPP include MySQL or MariaDB? Since XAMPP 5.5.30 and 5.6.14, XAMPP ships MariaDB instead of MySQL. OS X FAQs; OS X XAMPP-VM FAQs; Add-ons. Bitnami provides a free all-in-one tool to install Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress and many other popular open source apps on top of XAMPP. Visit Bitnami XAMPP or click to see full list of add-ons for XAMPP.
XAMPP is completely free PHP development environment. It contains Apache distribution packed with mysql, PHP and Pearl which is available for most popular OS's like Windows/Linux/Mac OSX, that makes you to configure and run Apache server in your local machine.
Phpmyadmin Xampp Mac
Now that we have got that out of the way, grab your drink of choice, fire up your computer, and let's rock 'n' roll.
In this chapter, we will look at installing the XAMPP server stack for both Windows and Mac OS X, installing the Aptana Studio integrated development environment (IDE), and then start looking at using jQuery Mobile and the various methods you can use in your project to include the framework. We will then create a small application to get our feet wet with jQuery Mobile. For some of you this could be a simple refresher, but for others this could be a crash course introduction.
You may be asking yourself, 'Why am I installing a full server stack, and is jQuery Mobile usage tied to PHP or any of the technology in the XAMPP stack?' While this book is focused on development with jQuery Mobile, we will be doing a very small bit of PHP with MySQL, just to show the interaction between the two, and so we will be setting up our XAMPP stack. However, the usage of jQuery Mobile is completely independent of PHP and any other technology in the XAMPP stack, so developers should feel free to use any other server stack that they prefer for development. If you are not a PHP pro, don't worry; the code will be basic and we will explain it all. If you wish to enhance your PHP skills, check out any of the number of PHP titles Packt has published.
Also by no means are you bound to using your local machine. If you have a web server, feel free to use it; we just find it easier to develop on a local machine so we don't have to worry about making a change, uploading, testing, and repeating.
XAMPP is a fully functional server stack by the folks at Apache Friends, which includes Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Tomcat, phpMyAdmin, and much more in one installation package. By installing it, you don't have to worry about manually setting up each component of a WAMP stack, you simply execute the installer and choose the components you wish to install.
To get started, we will need to download the latest stable XAMPP installer from https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html. We recommend using the installer rather than the ZIP file method for this book.
After we have it downloaded, the installation is pretty straightforward:
Double-click on the installation file and you will be asked to select a language. Make your choice and choose OK.
If you are using Windows Vista or higher, and User Account Control (UAC) is enabled, you will see a warning that some functionality may be limited if installed to the
Program Filesdirectory. Click OK.Another warning may pop up prompting you to install the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 redistributable package. Click Yes and you will be taken to a Microsoft downloads page where you can download this redistributable from. Download it and install it before continuing with the XAMPP installation.
Click on Next and you will be shown all the components that make up the XAMPP package. Select the features you want but for this book, be sure to pick at least Apache, PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin, as they will be utilized at some point in this book.
The default directory should be fine, so leave it as is and click Next.
This screen will ask you if you wish to learn more about Bitnami; this is your choice, so if you do not want to see more information, simply uncheck the checkbox and click Next.
The installation itself will take several minutes to complete. Once it is finished, click on Finish from the screen that pops up.
You will now see a screen that will inform you that all the services can be controlled through the XAMPP control panel. It will ask you if you want to open that screen now; click on Yes.
In the control panel, you will be able to start, stop, and restart all the services that were installed with XAMPP. By default, some of these services may be turned off. For now, let's make sure that Apache and MySQL are both running by clicking on Start next to the service name.
XAMPP also has a package available for those running Mac OS X and it is a million times easier to install than its Windows counterpart.
Download XAMPP from the same page as the Windows binaries: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html. Double-click on the .DMG file that you just downloaded, and drag the XAMPP folder into the Applications directory. After this is completed, open the XAMPP control panel found in Applications and start the Apache and MySQL services.
Regardless of what OS you installed XAMPP, we can verify the installation on both in the same way. Open up your browser and go to the address http://localhost/xampp. If all went well, you will see a screen similar to the following:
Congratulations! You now have a full-blown testing/development server ready for use to go with this book. If you don't see a screenshot like the preceding one, double check to make sure you did not miss a step.
Note
Important XAMPP Notes
There are a couple things you need to be aware of with regards to XAMPP. First off, it is a great product for situations like this when you need to set up a quick development environment, but it should be used for just that: a development environment. You should not use XAMPP as a production server. Instead, you should install and configure each component individually for various security reasons.
XAMPP for Mac is still listed as being in beta, therefore you could come across some bugs. If running beta software on your Mac scares you a bit, there are other alternatives such as MAMP, which is a very popular Mac stack available at http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html.
There is also a version of XAMPP for Linux, so if that is your OS of choice, feel free to download and install it for the purposes of this book.
Aptana Studio is a free, open source IDE built off of Eclipse. We will be using Aptana Studio 3 for this book and you can download it from http://www.aptana.com/products/studio3/download.html.
To install Aptana Studio 3 on a Windows machine, follow these instructions:
Double-click on the installer file and select Next to get the installation started.
Choose I Agree to accept the license agreement.
The default directory should be fine, as should the default programs group, so hit Next on these two steps.
The installer will now prompt you to choose which file extensions Aptana should be the default editor for. Leave the default settings on this screen. You can change them later in the IDE settings if you need to. Click on Next.
Click on Install to start the installation. Once the installation is finished, click on Next and then on Close.
Installing Aptana Studio on Mac is just as easy as it was for installing XAMPP. After you download the .DMG file, open it up and drag the indicated folder into your Applications folder.
Now that Aptana Studio is installed, open it up and you will be presented with a dialog box asking you to set up your default workspace directory. Go ahead and set this to be your htdocs folder of your XAMPP installation. For you folks on Windows, that directory will be c:xampphtdocs (provided you used the default directory). For the Mac users, this will be /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs. By setting this default workspace, any new projects we create will automatically be created and saved here, making it easier for us to test.
Also for you Mac users, there are some further steps that you may need to do for Apatana Studio to work correctly. By default, the XAMPP htdocs folder is owned by root, and because of this, it is set to read-only. In order for you to create and save to this directory, we will need to change those permissions.
Click on the folder in Finder and then choose Get Info from the File menu.
Click on the triangle next to Sharing and Permissions to display the permissions for the selected file or folder.
Click on the lock and authenticate with an administrator account.
Use the menus next to users and groups to change the permissions.
Once you are finished, close the Info window.
Of course, if you need further assistance with Aptana Studio or even XAMPP, refer to their respective websites for support. If you happen to fall in love with Aptana Studio and wish to learn more about it, check out Aptana Studio Beginner's Guide, Thomas Deuling, Packt Publishing.
Tip
We chose to use Aptana Studio 3 as an IDE for this book, so that you can follow along without having to purchase the same IDE we use (we use Zend Studio). Aptana Studio is free so if you have never used an IDE before, you now have an option. If you have an IDE already that you use on a daily basis, use it for the book. Just adjust any steps listed for Aptana to fit your own IDE.
Now we finally get to the meat and potatoes of what this book is about: jQuery Mobile. First thing we need to do is download the framework to use it in our projects. You have two ways of doing this. You can download a prebuilt ZIP file containing the latest stable release and everything you will need to use jQuery Mobile. The second option is that you can build a package that contains only the pieces you need, including earlier versions or unstable branches.
In this book, we will be using the complete package. There are couple reasons for this. First of all, we will be using and looking at so many different aspects of the framework that it would take a lot of space here for us to tell you which pieces to select in the builder. More importantly, as noted on the jQuery Mobile website, the builder is currently in alpha and is not recommended for production environments. Yes, we realize that we are not in a production environment here, but we don't want to try to master a framework by using code that could be unstable. We believe that's enough babbling, let's start downloading!
Go to http://jquerymobile.com. On the top right- hand side of the page, you will see the links to download the latest stable version (which at the time of writing this book is 1.4.5) and a link to the download builder. Click on the link for the latest stable. After the ZIP file is downloaded, go ahead and open it up and you should see the following:
That's quite daunting, isn't it! No worries at all though; we will only be referencing a few of the files here, but let's talk about the overall contents of the ZIP file so that you will have a better understanding of what you just downloaded:
demos: We highly recommend that you look at and play around with the contents of this folder. You will find numerous examples here of the different elements of jQuery Mobile. Go now, spend some time with it and then come back—we'll wait.images: This directory contains all of the icons that jQuery Mobile uses throughout the framework. You won't have to reference these directly, rather jQuery Mobile does so through CSS and its core JavaScript files.*.css files: These are several style sheets that make up the overall jQuery Mobile framework. They control the preceding icons, the theme (more on that later), structure, and more.jquery.mobile-1.4.5.css: This is the main and most important CSS file of the download and the one that you will reference and use in your applications.jquery.mobile-1.4.5.js: This is the core JavaScript of the framework.Note
You may have noticed that there are two versions of each file. One that has
.minappended to the filename and one that does not. Those with.minare compressed minified files. This means they do not have any white spaces, new line characters, and comments in them. They are the absolute smallest in size that they can be and are hard to read as they do not have any formatting. Uncompressed files, or those without.min, contain comments, spacing, and more things that make them easier to read.As a rule of thumb, you should develop with the uncompressed files; that way, if you have any questions or need to see how something works, you can easily read the file. When you deploy the application, use the
.minfiles so that the application size is smaller.A smaller web application will load faster, uses less bandwidth, and any little bit helps in a time where we have metered bandwidth on mobile devices. Google checks for the page load time as part of SEO. Faster loading JavaScript and CSS files will help you score brownie points and hence minified (
.min) files should be preferred in the production environment.
There is a third way to acquire and use the framework. In the previous section, we looked at two different ways in which we can download and include the framework locally in our project. In addition to downloading jQuery Mobile, you can also use it via a content delivery network (CDN).
When using a CDN such as Google or even jQuery's own, you do not have the files stored on your local server. Instead, when the user loads your web application or site, it makes a connection to the CDN and uses it from there. This offers a few advantages over having it on the server. One of the biggest advantages is that it increases parallelism. Typically your browser can only download a couple of files at a time from the same server. So if you load the jQuery files, jQuery Mobile framework JavaScript and CSS files, a few custom CSS, and JavaScript files, this can cause a bottleneck as you will have to wait for all the files to download. If you use a CDN, your application makes a connection to Google's server, for example, and downloads a couple of files while your local ones load. This may not seem like a lot of benefit since the files are so small, but it can make a world of difference to your end user. Some other advantages are as follows:
If the user visits other sites that use the same CDN, the framework files could already be cached, thereby decreasing your load time even more.
It reduces the load on your web server. If you have a heavily used site or application, this could decrease the use of your own server resources.
Using a CDN can also allow the user to download the framework files even faster since there may be a CDN mirror closer to the user location than your web server.
So with all these cool advantages, why in the world would we ever want to use it locally? I mean, it sounds like we'd be stupid to ever download it again. Well, my friends, as with many things in life, there is always a downside.
Obviously, the biggest downfall is offline applications. If you are expecting or even adding the slightest bit of offline functionality to your project, then you cannot have the project going off server to use the framework from a CDN. It would have to be stored locally. If the user is offline, they won't be able to download it from the CDN and therefore would not be able to use the project that you worked so hard on.
Install Xampp On Mac
Okay, so you're not planning on any offline functionality of your project. What else could stop you from using it via a CDN? Well, my friends we have a few more downfalls:
If your project is on a company intranet, there may be ACLs or firewalls in place that could prevent your internal webserver from accessing the outside world.
If your website is using an SSL certificate, the user will get a warning that they are accessing information from an unsecure site. This could spook many users and they may not trust your website.
If you make custom changes or add new functionality to the framework, you will obviously need to store it locally unless you're an absolute rock star and get your changes rolled into the main builds.
Well, we assume that we have covered the advantages and disadvantages of the usage of CDN well enough, so let's look at how and from where we can load jQuery Mobile.
There are three main CDNs we can use in our projects. They are Google, Microsoft, and of course, jQuery itself. Are there advantages to using one over the other? Possibly, but I think the differences would be small. Google may offer more mirrors but more people may use jQuery's own CDN meaning more people would have it cached, so in the end there may be no difference in efficiency.
We will look at the code for each of the CDNs and you can pull it from whichever one you wish to use.
Google's CDN code is as follows:
Microsoft's CDN code is as follows:
jQuery's CDN code is as follows:
So what are we doing in each of these blocks? Well, the first line of each block <link rel...> is loading in the CSS file we need for the project. The first <script src...> loads jQuery itself into our project. With the current version of jQuery Mobile, you can use jQuery versions 1.8 to 1.11 or 2.1. You will have to make sure that for every jQuery Mobile application, you will need to refer to the jQuery library before you refer to the jQuery Mobile JavaScript file.
Tip
This brings up a good point: even though we are using jQuery Mobile, we still need to load jQuery core. jQuery Mobile is not a replacement for jQuery proper but more of an extension, much like jQuery UI is.
The final <script src…> file loads jQuery Mobile itself. So let's get our feet wet in code now.
So far in this chapter we have done nothing but talk about jQuery Mobile, how we get it, why we should do things a certain way, blah blah. You're a developer; you want to see this in action and now you will. We are going to make a simple jQuery Mobile application. We'll see the code and then we'll explain what is going on within each piece of code:
Go ahead and fire up Aptana Studio 3.
Navigate to File | New | Web Project.
Pick the default template
Name the project whatever you like.
Don't worry too much about everything in Aptana Studio right now, as we'll look at it in more detail in the next chapter.
Right-click on your project and navigate to New | File from the pop-up menu. Name the file index.html. Add the following code to the file:
When we execute this code, open up your browser and you should see the output similar to what we will see in the following screenshots on a mobile device:
That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, it's time to break down the code and see what's going on under the hood:
This is your standard HTML5 header with us loading the jQuery Framework from the jQuery CDN. Also notice in-keeping with tradition, we are loading the compressed jQuery and jQuery Mobile files so that we have the smallest possible footprint we can have:
Now, you may or may not know this line, depending on how much mobile development experience you have. This line is important as it really makes a difference to how your website or application looks on a mobile browser. Apple started it for use on iOS Safari but has since been adopted by others. If you did not have this line in your project, the page we have would be rendered 'zoomed out' basically. The user would have to double-click or zoom in via other means to see the page. By having this, we make sure mobile browsers are on their best behavior in helping your project look fabulous when the user visits:
This is the start of jQuery Mobile specific code. For the most part, our project is straight HTML5. There is very little actual JavaScript involved, but we have these weird div lines sprinkled throughout. These are jQuery Mobile tags. It uses the standard div tag but adds on these things called data roles. In this instance, we are giving div the role of a page. The page role is the main role in jQuery Mobile. We'll discuss this in more detail in another chapter. For now, let's keep moving.
Here we are using another role, the header role. This allows us to display 'Web Development Books' in a different manner than the rest of the page. As you might have noticed in the preceding screenshots, the entire text in the header is not visible. Whenever the text in the header is long, it will be truncated and appended by the ellipses (...). So make sure that you do not have really long names in the header. However, if long names cannot be averted, you can override the jQuery Mobile CSS to make sure that the text in the header is not truncated.
This is the heart of our page, the content. Within the div tags, we are creating an unordered list, which jQuery Mobile then renders for us as buttons almost. If we had the links going to existing pages rather than the dummy link, the user could click the list items and navigate through the project. Again, we will be discussing these in much greater detail in another chapter.
Are you still with us? Everything might seem a bit overwhelming right now, even though we hope it doesn't, but as we go and you write more code, things will get easier and you'll see how powerful jQuery Mobile is without having to write a lot of complicated code.
In this chapter, we set up a local development server using XAMPP, and we installed an IDE to use for the book with Aptana Studio 3. We looked at the different ways you can download jQuery Mobile for local use in your project and then you saw how we can use it from the different CDNs, along with the advantages and disadvantages of using a CDN. Once all the basic setup was completed, we created our first jQuery Mobile project.
In the chapter that follows, we will take a look at the different tools and techniques that will help us not just in the development process, but also help us test our application as we develop it.
Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 1.9. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version is available here: Installing AMP.
AMP, stands for Apache, MySQL & PHP. Moodle is written in a scripting language called PHP and stores most of its data in a database. The recommended database is MySQL. Before installing Moodle you must have a working PHP installation and a working database to turn your computer into a functional web server platform. As individual applications, Apache, MySQL and PHP can be tricky to set up for average computer users. Moodle uses one of the AMP programs to make the process easier. When you install a Moodle AMP package it installs both the server, database, PHP and Moodle itself with their basic interconnections already made.
In 2008, Moodle is rolled into XAMPP (which includes Perl) in the Windows complete package and into MAMP for the Mac OS complete package. Of course, the Standard install packages contains just the Moodle program.
- TIP:Installing Moodle for the first time on a localhost (a stand alone computer) is easy and can be a very useful tool even if a web based production Moodle Server is available for use.
- 3Windows - XAMPP
- 3.1Tips and Tricks for Windows XAMPP
Mac OS X - MAMP
Complete Install Packages for Mac OS X are named Moodle4Mac. These do not have sufficient security for public, production servers--only use for private, local testing purposes.
These packages allow Moodle to be installed, along with the prerequisites that includes a web server, database and scripting language (Apache, MySQL and PHP in this case). Several versions of the complete install package are available. You will find versions for Intel based Macs and for older PPC based Macs. Please use the correct version for your processor.
See below if you want a secure, public server with OS X. This will use the web server that comes preinstalled with every Mac Computer.
See also Step-by-step Guide for Installing Moodle on Mac OS X 10.4 Client.
Red Hat Linux
You should install all available RPM packages for Apache, PHP and MySQL. One package that people frequently forget is the php-mysql package which is necessary for PHP to talk to MySQL.
Once these are installed the standard Installation guide should be fairly straightforward.
A more detailed walkthrough is here: RedHat Linux installation
Windows - XAMPP
For a complete description of installing an XAMPP webserver and then adding your own standard windows Moodle install package see Windows installation using XAMPP.
NOTE: There is a difference between the XAMPP Installer used in the Moodle/Windows/XAMPP installation package and the XAMPP webserver. The complete install package page has detailed instructions for a Windows installation using XAMPP and there is the XAMPP Installer FAQ.
Tips and Tricks for Windows XAMPP
There are lots of ways to start a Moodle after an install. Most Moodlers will have one or more 'localhost' links on their computer installed in 'Favorites' or even as a browser's default opening screen. But first a web server has to be started. Here are two ways to start them.
Automatic Windows services startup
In order to make starting Moodle more convenient in the future you could install the web and database servers as Windows services that are started automatically. To do this go to Start -> Run... and type the command 'c:/moodle/server/service.exe -install' into Open box. Then click OK.
Start Moodle by typing localhost in the web browser and/or adding localhost as a favorite site.
Single button service startups
Use the 'xampp_start' or 'xampp_restart' to start your webserver. You can install multiple localhost webservers on a computer. Each will have it's own start and restart programs.
- Create a shortcut on the start menu, favorites or desktop that points to each specific file like c:Moodle19restart_xampp.bat . Label each shortcut to a localhost differently, for example C_Moodle19, or Moodle16 or MoodleSchool.
Start Moodle by placing localhost in the web browser or adding it as a favorite site. Whichever localhost you restarted, that is the Moodle your web browser will find.
- Use the xampp_restart program. It will automatically close any running webserver on your computer before it starts the version of Moodle you want to run.
- Use any xampp_stop to close any running webserver on your computer.
EasyPHP - similar to XAMPP
As an alternative to the above package you could use a package like EasyPHP that bundles all the software you need into a single Windows application. Note that the EasyPHP 1.8 uses older versions of the software that are too old for Moodle 1.6. Also many menus for EasyPHP are still in French. EasyPHP may be a good option again once its version 2.0 is released.
Mac OS without the complete install
It is possible to use the Apache server that Apple provides, and add PHP and MySQL using Marc Liyanage's packages. Both of the pages below come with good instructions that we won't duplicate here:
- PHP: Download from here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/
- MySQL: Download here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/mysql/
Once these are installed the standard Installation guide should be fairly straightforward.
Go here for a Step-by-step Guide for Installing Moodle on Mac OS X 10.4 Client (not server).
IIS for Windows
Here you can find steps for an IIS: Windows installation for XAMPP or Windows 2003.
Hosting Service
Hosting services vary quite a lot in the way they work. Some will install Moodle for you. Others may have 'scripts' that you can choose that can add Moodle to your site.
Most will offer a web-based control panel to control your site, create databases and set up cron. Some may also offer terminal access via ssh, so that you can use the command shell to do things.
You should work your way through the Installation guide and take each step at a time. Ask your hosting provider if you get stuck. Remember, you will not use a Complete install package from Moodle, but rather one of the Generic packages if you already have a webserver.
Testing PHP
Once you have installed your web server and PHP you should be able to create a file (for example phpinfo.php in the document root) with the following in it:
You should be able to open this file in a web browser by going to to the URL localhost/phpinfo and see a web page that has PHP status information in it such as this.
Vista and Windows 7
Many people have trouble installing the stand alone local Moodle for Windows on Vista and Windows 7.
There are several solutions:
- A simple one is to use http://bitnami.org/stack/moodle
- Another solution is to look at these videos at Sebastian Sulinski Design for Windows Vista.
- Also, the page at Web Developer's Notes outlines how you can install an AMP on windows 7. Installing Moodle from there should be considerably easier.
- It's also easy to install a Xampp server and then a Standard Moodle Package Note: not Moodle for Windows.
See also
- Complete install packages, also includes instructions for creating a stand alone (localhost) installation on a single computer.