Getting Started with eZ Platform on Vagrant

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Last year, I had a somewhat negative experience with installing eZ Publish on a Vagrant box. Since then, they’ve significantly improved both the software and the VM-friendliness by, well, flat out removing the legacy stack. The VM setup we’ll be using in this tutorial comes from the labs of NetGen and the mind of @vranac, and is followed by the installation procedure on our very own Homestead Improved modified by yours truly.

eZ Publish Logo

Note: the new eZ system, now called eZ Platform, is still in deep alpha mode and doesn’t really contain all the features of the old one yet. In fact, if you want to do any kind of serious content management and modification, you need to add the legacy stack into the mix, the process of which is described here.

Vranac setup

Vranac defined an Ansible recipe for provisioning a raw Ubuntu/Trusty box with all the prerequisites for eZ Platform. This means that, while it keeps your raw box highly reusable for other projects (thus saving on disk space), the provisioning procedure can be very long (upwards of 40 minutes). Likewise, to use this approach, you need Ansible on the host machine unlike with Homestead Improved. It’s up to you to choose which setup you like more – both work just fine. The instructions for Homestead Improved are in the next section, but first, let’s look at Vranac’s approach.

Requirements

Your host machine should have:

Note that if you’re on Windows, Ansible is not available. However, the configuration will make sure it downloads and installs Ansible inside the guest VM, and executes it from within, so no worries.

Clone and Up

To set up an environment, we’ll clone @vranac’s Vagrantfile setup and vagrant up it.

git clone https://github.com/netgen/vagrant-ansible-ezpublish.git
cd vagrant-ansible-ezpublish
vagrant up

The up procedure should take care of all provisioning automatically, including folder sharing. It might take a while, depending on the speed of your machine and of your internet connection. It might also ask you for your admin password (or get the UAC dialog on Windows) on the host machine, due to using NFS for file sharing.

By default, the folder you’re in (vagrant-ansible-ezpublish) will be linked to var/www/ezpublish inside the VM. A database called ezpublish will also be automatically created with the username ez and the password ez.

Final steps

Now, there are a couple of caveats to keep in mind.

Due to some Apache 2.4 shenanigans the team couldn’t get around, the folder in the VM that gets shared with the host machine is var/www/ezpublish rather than the traditional var/www. Thus, to power an eZ Platform instance on this VM, you need to do the following once you’re inside the machine with vagrant ssh

cd /var/www/ezpublish
composer create-project ezsystems/ezplatform
mv ezplatform/* .

We need to do this because the create project command creates an eZ project in the ezplatform folder, and Apache’s vhost is linked into ezpublish.

Then, install the demo bundle and clear cache with:

php ezpublish/console ezplatform:install --env prod demo
php ezpublish/console cache:clear --env prod

To visit the front end, go to 172.21.12.10, and to visit the back end, go to 172.21.12.10/shell:

ezPublish shell

The login credentials are admin / publish.

Important note: Due to this setup, if something goes wrong, you shouldn’t rm -rf the contents of the ezpublish folder and assume everything will be fine if you create a new project. If you delete the folder or its contents, you’re effectively removing the contents of the folder on the host, which includes provisioning scripts and the Vagrantfile. To avoid these problems, you can either:

  • create sub-projects inside /var/www/ezpublish like so /var/www/ezpublish/project1 and configure new Apache virtual hosts to accommodate this

or follow the instructions below, applied to Homestead Improved but easily applicable to all other systems and virtual machine environments as well.

Configuring eZ on Homestead Improved

The setup above favors Apache instead of Nginx, and is a bit clumsy in terms of multi-project setups. Let’s set it up on an environment we’re familiar with now, and with which we can be up and running in under 10 minutes: Homestead Improved. Follow the tutorial and set it up. Then, vagrant halt it into shutdown mode and set up a new site:

- map: ez.app
      to: /home/vagrant/Code/ezplatform/web

Re-provision with vagrant provision.

Now that our new Nginx host is set up, let’s enter the VM and create a new MySQL database:

mysql -u homestead -psecret -e "create database ezpublish";

Note that the username and password are homestead / secret, as per default Homestead configuration.

We also need some PHP extensions installed:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php5-intl php5-xsl

Now, let’s go into the Code folder while inside the VM and create the project.

cd ~/Code
composer create-project ezsystems/ezplatform

This might take a while so grab a cup and relax. When it finishes, wrap up the installation by installing the demo bundle and clearing the cache.

cd ezplatform
php ezpublish/console ezplatform:install --env prod demo
php ezpublish/console cache:clear --env prod

Don’t forget to add ez.app (or whichever site name you chose) to your /etc/hosts file on the host machine, as per instructions in the Homestead Improved quickstart.

Now, visit the URL http://ez.app/ (the trailing slash is important, as it forces your browser to look for the site directly, rather than use Google to search for it if DNS servers don’t resolve it) and enjoy!

Screenshot 2015-05-07 16.53.18

Diving into EZPublish and Symfony at PHPSummerCamp

With the installation done, we can finally dive in and build wonderfully complex systems that even the most demanding websites can’t out-demand. It’s important to be patient with the system – being in alpha mode, it’s still incredibly unstable and very slow, but getting there. Keep testing and help the team out with suggestions – let’s make sure it gets released soon by providing as much feedback as possible. Use it with the dev tools open and review the errors, discuss on the forums, tweet at them, or let us know in the comments below.

To dive in an learn about the platform, you could go and read the documentation, or you could come and join us as PHPSummerCamp – the same event we attended last year. This time around, some even more high profile speakers are flying in, including but not limited to:

…and many more, with topics like:

  • Deep insights into object-oriented programming with Symfony
  • Managing assets with Puli
  • HTTP caching with Varnish
  • Rapid API development with Lionframe
  • Modeling by example
  • Profiling PHP applications (Blackfire)
  • Migrating to Symfony 3.0

With not only three full days of hands-on workshops (rather than the traditional theoretical bombardment you usually get at conferences) but also boat trips, lunches, and the experience of the Croatian coastline (something you shouldn’t miss – trust me), it’s a no-brainer.

Rovinj Coast

The event has just had its super-early-bird prices announced and tickets made available for purchase, so make sure you check out the announcement post.

Too expensive? Just convince your boss! Make sure they know that your education and training will benefit the company much more in the long term than you staying at work for those three extra days.

Conclusion

As you can see, the installation has gone a long way since last year. The system has been upgraded to a great extent, Symfony’s DX program helped with the multi-platform aspect and the symlink problems, and the excellent work of NetGen and @vranac has improved the flow immeasurably. Go ahead and install eZ now, play with it, tell us what you think. Use it to boot up a CMS that needs more than a blog and let us know how you feel about it. If you do something interesting with it, get in touch, I’d love more eZ tutorials!

Feedback? Comments? Leave them below or tell me live at PHP Summer Camp!

Bruno SkvorcBruno Skvorc
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Bruno is a blockchain developer and technical educator at the Web3 Foundation, the foundation that's building the next generation of the free people's internet. He runs two newsletters you should subscribe to if you're interested in Web3.0: Dot Leap covers ecosystem and tech development of Web3, and NFT Review covers the evolution of the non-fungible token (digital collectibles) ecosystem inside this emerging new web. His current passion project is RMRK.app, the most advanced NFT system in the world, which allows NFTs to own other NFTs, NFTs to react to emotion, NFTs to be governed democratically, and NFTs to be multiple things at once.

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