VadaProject / vada-project

An Apache+PHP+SQL application for collaborative philosophical debate.

Getting started (local development)

These instructions are optimized for XAMPP, a pre-configured distribution Apache distribution containing MariaDB, PHP, and Perl. You can try a simpler, more light-weight development server like MAMP. If you're living in the 21st century, you could also use something like Docker.

1. Install XAMPP (>=v8.x.x)
   • Note your document root folder; you'll need this later.
     • On macOS, this is this /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/
     • On Windows this is normally C:/xampp/htdocs/
2. Clone this repository into document root, and name the subfolder vada.
   • From CLI:

       cd path/to/xamppfiles/htdocs/
       git clone https://github.com/VadaProject/vada-project.git vada

   • Using GitHub Desktop:
     • "Clone a repository from the internet" > https://github.com/VadaProject/vada-project/
     • Set Local Path to "path/to/xampp/htdocs/vada"
     • Click "Clone"
3. Set up redirects
   • Copy .htaccess_root_example from this directory to its parent folder htdocs/ and name it .htaccess
   • If you're on Windows, you'll probably need to enable viewing hidden files.
4. Install Composer, either locally or globally.
   • Composer installer for Windows: https://getcomposer.org/Composer-Setup.exe
   • On macOS using Homebrew: brew install composer
5. Open a command prompt in this directory and run Composer:

   •  composer install # gets dependencies and dumps autoloader files

6. Set up Database...
   1. Log into the phpMyAdmin dashboard at https://localhost/phpmyadmin/
      • XAMPP's default MySQL username is root, with no password.
   2. From the SQL tab, load and execute the script sql/vadaProject.sql.
      • This should create a VadaProjectDB database, and its tables.
   3. Optional step: load and execute the script in sql/create_dummy_claims.sql
      • This contains sample claims that might be useful for testing.
   4. Lastly, run databaseUpdate.sql
      • Currently necessary because I haven't regenerated the old scripts yet.
   5. Create a new database user with the username VadaUser, and a secure password.
      • IMPORTANT: Change the user's hostname from '%' to localhost.
7. Configure database connection variables...
   1. Copy config/.env.example.php to config/.env.php.
   2. Fill in the values...

      $DB_SERVER = 'localhost';
      $DB_USERNAME = 'VadaUser';
      $DB_PASSWORD = '== MY PASSWORD ==';
      $DB_DATABASE = 'VadaProjectDB';

8. A local instance of The Vada Project should now be functional at https://localhost/.
   • If something went catastrophically wrong, create an Issue in this repository.

Deploying to production

We currently have a production server running at https://vadaproject.com. This runs a webhook and automatically pulls changes every time main is pushed to. The steps for making a new one of these are fairly similar to the above, although you may need to use a UI like hPanel.

Development

If you don't already have an IDE of choice, I recommend Visual Studio Code and DevSense PHP Tools. If you're a student, you can get an educational license of the Pro version.

You should also set up XAMPP's included instance of XDebug, so you can use it for step-debugging and breakpoints. The steps to do so are platform dependent and really confusing. Good luck!

Other resources

• Official PHP Docs
• PHP The Right Way – MUST READ THIS
• EasyDB README.md (database wrapper)