Deploying CakePHP

This information is provided to help you get (possibly several) CakePHP applications running on your group's web server. The setup I have suggested is Apache 2 with mod_php, which is the standard PHP setup.

Installation and Setup

First of course, you need the relevant software installed:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql cakephp
sudo a2enmod rewrite

If you haven't already, you will need to install the MySQL server as well: sudo apt-get install mysql-server

I'm going to assume a Cake app already checked-out in the directory /home/userid/app/ and that you want to access that project at http://server/mysite/.

To alias this directory to the URL, edit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and at the bottom of the <Virtualhost> section (right before the “</Virtualhost>”), add this:

Alias /mysite "/home/userid/app/webroot"
<Directory /home/userid/app/webroot>
  Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride all
  Allow from all
  Order allow,deny
</Directory>

Restart the Apache server so it recognizes the config changes:

Settings

You will likely have to modify your config/database.php file so that your app uses a MySQL database that you create. See the MySQL database instructions for info on creating a database for your app. As is the style with Cake, you will have to create your database tables manually so they can be discovered by Cake.

You will also likely have to change the ownership of your app's temporary directory so it can be written by the web server process:

Finally, since your site will be deployed in a directory (i.e. within /mysite/ instead of at the server root), edit the webroot/.htaccess file and add a RewriteBase line so it looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /mysite/
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Redirects and Links

Of course, any links within your system will have to take the new URL into account. For example, a link like this

will have to become:

Hopefully, you have used link or other URL-building functions from the HtmlHelper class or the Controller class in your app. If so, the changes should be automatic.

If you haven't, the easiest fix might be to go back to your code and use them wherever you need a URL.

Static Media

For all but the simplest sites, you will have some static files that accompany the dynamically-generated code (stylesheets, images, Javascript code, etc.).

With Cake, you can simply place these files within the webroot directory. It would likely to be easiest to create a directory named something like webroot/static and put files in there. They can then be accessed at a URL like http://server/mysite/static/style.css .

See Also

Deployment in the Cake Cookbook.