MongoDB is a document oriented, NoSQL database. It is gathering momentum and popularity amongst developers because it is flexible, and scalable at the same time. In this article I will describe how I got it set up and working on my Mac running OS X 10.8.2 and MAMP with PHP 5.2.17, and PHP 5.3.6.

They go a bit simpler route than trying to compile it yourself by using the binaries direct from the source. Instructions are included to test the installation, insert a record and how to install the MongoDB PHP driver for a MAMP installation. It's a shared object, though, so it's not specific to MAMP and could be installed even on the local OSX PHP functionality.

Zend Server CE for Mac (as of this writing), comes compiled as an i386 executable only. This includes the PHP binary, php library, and apache binaries that come shipped with ZSCE. While ZSCE works great out the box with all the provided extensions, you might find that you want some additional 3rd party PHP extensions compiled/linked into this stack. That's where things get a little confusing, and in this post, we'll look at how to install the gearman extension.

He give two methods - the easy way where you can export a CFLAGS setting to compile with multiple architectures or the harder way (that works for Gearman), building static libraries. The full list of commands (and some example output) is included in the post. In the comments there's also an example of the install if you're using Macports.

To do my work, I need to have several different versions of PHP at hand, with different configurations, and so I always compile my own PHP and Apache binaries on my Mac. [...] Now that I use PHP 5.3.0 more and more, I decided it was time to compile my own version. As it turns out, compiling PHP 5.3.0 on Snow Leopard is a bit involving.

He walks you through the configure command he used, how he patched the iconv.c file, patch the source of PHP with the change and recompile with an EXTRA_LIBs environment variable set. The steps he followed were based on the hints provided in this bug from the PHP.net website.

Since I've started doing all of my development on virtual machines, I began thinking about my development workflow: In theory, I should be able to model the perfect server environment virtually. I wasn't sure what environment I wanted to end up with, but I had a good idea what basic virtual machines I wanted as a starting layout.

He sets up three different environments - development, staging a production - all with the same packages and all built on a base Ubuntu virtual machine. By cloning your customized version, you can built out as many instances as you'd like and tweak each for their intent.

Last week we looked at 22 Neat Editors for Windows. But sometimes, a code editor simply isn't enough, especially when you're working with things like databases and classes. Which IDE will you prefer? Hopefully you'll find it below!

IDEs that made the list include:

• Visual Web Developer
• PHPEdit
• Expression Web
• Coda
• Eclipse
• Aptana Studio

Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer from RailsEnvy.com do some Ruby on Rails commercials in the same style of the Mac vs PC ads. Videos produced by Jason Hawkins of MakeFilmWork.com.

Other videos include Ruby on Rails vs .NET, Ruby on Rails vs Django and, of course, Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion.

There are many good things in this product. Among them, is the ability to easily activate and deactivate most of the plugins and extensions that come bundled with PHP by default. [...] Unfortunately, the problem also contains many what I would call "bugs" or usability enhancements that are simply not there.

A few of the things that made his bad list included: a lacking install process (too long?), the lack of an obvious logging tool and a different sort of checking for setting directives (a check against a regular expression?)

He found some good in the release too - the easy to install extensions, the number of extensions it comes bundled with and the inclusion of MySQL with the stack. He notes he won't be abandoning his typical install (like MAMP/XAMPP) over this tool - at least not for right now.

This post is for the techies who know me, and are switching. Some are coming from Windows, some from Linux, some are designers who need to do some local development. So, I'll try to keep this post as simple as possible, and perhaps more like a tutorial, where you can "copy and paste" commands and files.

He recommends a few pieces of software that you'll need - things like XAMPP and MySQL - and some other "nice to haves" like TextMate, Subversion and Expandrive. He shows how to set up the shell environment, create virtual hosts and add them into the /etc/hosts file so they'll resolve locally.

Yesterday I decided to tiptoe into the development of custom Zend_Tool Providers as the introductional article series by Ralph Schindler motivated me to learn more about it and I already have some useful use cases on my mind. Therefor I prior had to install the Zend_Tool component and it's driving CLI scripts on my MacBook.

Its a three step processes to get things up and running:

• Fetching and installing the Zend_Tool component
• Putting the Zend_Tool CLI scripts to work
• Checking the installation

The tricks is to get everything installed in the right place and to add the links to directories where they're needed. Once its installed a simple "zf show version" command will let you know its all working correctly.

If you've ever attended a PHP conference, you might have thought that Apple was a sponsor based on all the Mac laptops you saw. Many of the PHP developers toting Macs are running Linux as a virtual machine but more and more PHP developers work natively on the Mac. Recognizing this fact, Oracle has made it downright easy to develop PHP/Oracle applications on the Mac. In this guide I'll show just how easy it is to get your Mac setup to build Oracle-based PHP applications.

His method requires that you have access to a server already running Oracle (even the Express Edition will do), XCode and either Fink or MacPorts (optional). His setup is to use the Oracle installation inside of a virtual machine to get the needed libraries from to build PHP correctly. He even includes some screenshots of the Parallels installation of Kubuntu and some test code to ensure things are working as they should.