Welcome To Trax!
What Is Trax?
Trax is an open source software package designed to speed the
development of the type of web site that is built around a
database. Trax is a PHP and
Apache port of
Ruby on Rails,
which is well described in the book
Agile Web Development with Rails.
Trax uses the popular
Model-View-Controller
design pattern. It helps you develop web sites faster by
automating the common development steps, and by using naming
conventions instead of explicit configuration. This is done in a
way that permits you to do further customization by hand where the
standard Trax methods don't meet your needs.
Who Is Trax For?
Trax is designed to be used by programmers who have a good
working knowledge of
object-oriented programming
in general and
PHP 5
in particular; of
relational database management systems
and SQL; and of
Apache server configuration.
Trax does not attempt to address the needs of unskilled users.
What Do I Need To Run Trax?
Trax requires PHP 5, the
Apache web server and a relational
DBMS such as MySQL or another DBMS
supported by the
PEAR DB class. Apache must
be configured to allow Trax to use
mod_rewrite
and to support PHP 5 with
mod_php.
PHP 5 must also be available from the command line.
To verify that PHP 5 is available from the command
line, type:
$ php --version
PHP 5.0.4 (cli) (built: Nov 8 2005 08:27:12)
...
The version must be at least 5.0.3
To verify that PHP 5 is available as an Apache module,
create the one-line program below and install it somewhere in the
Apache document root:
<?php phpinfo() ?>
When you browse to this program, you will see a page that
describes the Apache PHP installation (if any).
How Do I Install Trax?
Download the Trax
PEAR-installable package
into a convenient working directory, then install it with the
command:
$ pear install -o PHPonTrax-.tgz
You will probably need to run this command as the superuser. The
-o switch tells PEAR to also load any
required PEAR modules that are not already installed. The
pear config-show command will show you where
your PEAR library is installed:
$ pear config-show
CONFIGURATION:
==============
PEAR executables directory bin_dir ...
PEAR documentation directory doc_dir ...
PEAR directory php_dir ...
PEAR data directory data_dir ...
PEAR test directory test_dir ...
...
Trax stores its documentation in
/PHPonTrax/doc/ in HTML.
To read the documentation, browse to
file:///PHPonTrax/doc/index.html
You should verify correct installation by changing to directory
/PHPonTrax/test/ and
running the command php runtests.php. All
tests should complete without failure. Also verify that the
trax command is available from the command line.
If PHP was installed on your system without PEAR,
install it.
If you are installing Trax on a shared host where you do not
have authorization to install in the system PEAR module library,
the best approach is to build a
local PEAR copy
and install Trax there.