PHP development environment configuration & Simulating POST FORM using Snoopy

　　I just learned to use PHP, beginning from Codecademy and W3school and keeping studying by asking Google/Baidu when encounting problems as I go. I developed a simple website for DISC project, which I might write a blog to describe in the future. This blog records how to configure the PHP development environment for Ubuntu and Windows, as well as my attempt to simulate POST FORM using Snoopy.

• Installing LAMP On Ubuntu

Install Apache

sudo apt-get install apache2

Install PHP

sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Install MySQL

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

mysql -u root

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');

 

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

　

gksudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

extension=mysql.so

 

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

 

• Installing WAMP On Windows

　　I've tried for several days to configure some PHP IDE with Apache on Windows. In the end, I found a pretty much simple way to do it -- WAMPSERVER + EPP3. 

　　The wampserver downloaded from official website doesn't work on my Windows 7 x64 OS, then I downloaded an old version of wampserver from Baidu Software which works. The EPP 1.2.2 doesn't work well either, while EPP3 works. Actually it won't be troublesome if I just use Apache and any editor to wite code, not IDE.

　　In WAMPSERVER need to click "Put Online"

　　Edit Apache -> httpd.conf -> "DocumentRoot" & "<Directory ...>"

　　Note EPP3 project files should be placed at the subdirectory of the Apache root www directory.

 

• Using Snoopy

　　　The following is part of the Snoopy README document

What is Snoopy?
    
    Snoopy is a PHP class that simulates a web browser. It automates the task of retrieving web page content and posting forms, for example.

CLASS METHODS:

    fetch($URI)
    -----------
    
    This is the method used for fetching the contents of a web page.
    $URI is the fully qualified URL of the page to fetch.
    The results of the fetch are stored in $this->results.
    If you are fetching frames, then $this->results
    contains each frame fetched in an array.
        
    fetchtext($URI)
    ---------------    
    
    This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
    the text from the page, stripping out html tags and other
    irrelevant data.        

    fetchform($URI)
    ---------------    
    
    This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
    the form elements from the page, stripping out html tags and other
    irrelevant data.        

    fetchlinks($URI)
    ----------------

    This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
    the links from the page. By default, relative links are
    converted to their fully qualified URL form.

    submit($URI,$formvars)
    ----------------------
    
    This submits a form to the specified $URI. $formvars is an
    array of the form variables to pass.
        
        
    submittext($URI,$formvars)
    --------------------------

    This behaves exactly like submit() except that it only returns
    the text from the page, stripping out html tags and other
    irrelevant data.        

    submitlinks($URI)
    ----------------

    This behaves exactly like submit() except that it only returns
    the links from the page. By default, relative links are
    converted to their fully qualified URL form.


CLASS VARIABLES:    (default value in parenthesis)

    $host            the host to connect to
    $port            the port to connect to
    $proxy_host        the proxy host to use, if any
    $proxy_port        the proxy port to use, if any
    $agent            the user agent to masqerade as (Snoopy v0.1)
    $referer        referer information to pass, if any
    $cookies        cookies to pass if any
    $rawheaders        other header info to pass, if any
    $maxredirs        maximum redirects to allow. 0=none allowed. (5)
    $offsiteok        whether or not to allow redirects off-site. (true)
    $expandlinks    whether or not to expand links to fully qualified URLs (true)
    $user            authentication username, if any
    $pass            authentication password, if any
    $accept            http accept types (image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, */*)
    $error            where errors are sent, if any
    $response_code    responde code returned from server
    $headers        headers returned from server
    $maxlength        max return data length
    $read_timeout    timeout on read operations (requires PHP 4 Beta 4+)
                    set to 0 to disallow timeouts
    $timed_out        true if a read operation timed out (requires PHP 4 Beta 4+)
    $maxframes        number of frames we will follow
    $status            http status of fetch
    $temp_dir        temp directory that the webserver can write to. (/tmp)
    $curl_path        system path to cURL binary, set to false if none