Project Setup Guide

Welcome to our project! This guide will walk you through the steps needed to set up the project environment on your local machine.

Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure you have the following installed:

• XAMPP: Make sure to install the version that is compatible with our project.
• Composer: A PHP dependency manager.
• Git: For cloning the repository.

Installation Steps

Step 1: Install XAMPP

Download and install the correct version of XAMPP for your operating system. Our teams web apps work on XAMPP/PHP versions less 8.0. Recommended XAMPP/PHP 7.4.30 XAMPP will provide you with the necessary Apache server, MySQL, and PHP.

• Download XAMPP: XAMPP Official Website

Step 2: Install Composer

Composer is required for managing PHP dependencies.

• Download Composer:

• Download and Run Composer-setup.exe Download from here

• Dont select any extra options

• Select the installation directory to XAMPP/php, (it automatically detects)

• Complete Install.

• Open CMD with XAMPP htdocs directory (cd path/to/htdocs)

• Verify the installation by running composer in your CMD.

Step 3: Clone Repository

Clone the project repository into the 'htdocs' directory of your XAMPP installation.

• Open your command line tool.
• Navigate to your 'htdocs' directory: cd path/to/htdocs
• Clone the repository: git clone <repository link>

Step 4: Set Up PHP Dependencies

Open your command line tool and execute the following commands:

1. composer - This checks if Composer is correctly installed.
2. composer update --ignore-platform-req=ext-gd - Updates your project dependencies, ignoring the GD extension requirement.
3. composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle - Adds Guzzle, an HTTP client, to your project.

Step 5: Database Setup

Download the provided SQL dump file for setting up your database.

• Download SQL Dump Schema: Download from here

Import this file into your MySQL database via PHPMyAdmin or MySQL Workbench.

Step 6: Start XAMPP Server

Finally, start the XAMPP server:

• Open the XAMPP Control Panel.
• Start the Apache and MySQL modules. (MySQL may not start if you have a workbench setup. Use port and local user credentials from workbench)
• Access the project in the browser.
• Use localhost/<your repo & file paths>

Conclusion

You should now have everything set up for the project. Please refer to Final_Project_Report to follow the development journey and gain additional information.