The first hint I came across was putting Script PUT put.php in your httpd.conf in the <Directory> section. (That is, of course, assuming that your script for handling PUT requests is called put.php.)

I tried that and on restarting Apache got the error “Invalid command ‘Script’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration” – which lead to a short bit of research (thanks Google!) that pointed out that the Script directive requires mod_actions be enabled in Apache. I did that and then tried to hit my script with a PUT request, to which I got a 405 error: “The requested method PUT is not allowed for the URL /test/put.php”.

Well, that was certainly strange, so I added <Limit> and <LimitExcept> blocks to my <Directory> section, but to no avail. So I changed the <Directory> directive from <Directory /var/www/test> to <Directory /var/www/test/put.php>. It looked strange, but what the heck, worth a try. I could now do PUT requests, but only as long as the url was /test/put.php, and that is not what is wanted when putting together a RESTful application. Trying to do anything useful, like a PUT to /test/put.php/users/ resulted in more 405 errors, now saying “The requested method PUT is not allowed for the URL /test/put.php/users/”.

So, back to the httpd.conf to change the <Directory> back to the previous. And then on to the other method I saw in a few places, using mod_rewrite to forward PUT (and DELETE) requests to the script. Of course, everywhere I saw this listed it was claimed that this alone (without the Script directive) was enough to enable PUT. So, I commented out the Script directive and added some mod_rewrite statements to the .htaccess file (which is always preferable in development as you can make changes on the fly without reloading or restarting the server.) So I added a RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} (PUT|DELETE) and a RewriteRule .* put.php.

And, I went back to test it again and, big surprise, got a 405 error again. Now, even when pointing directly at /test/put.php I got a 405 error. So, I decided to try combining the two. I uncommented the lines in the httpd.conf and bumped the server and was pleasantly surprised that PUT (and DELETE) requests to the /test/ directory were properly handled by the script. Now I could do something useful, like add another mod_rewrite rule to send all traffic for /api/ to the /test/put.php and call /api/users/ with a PUT (or DELETE) request and it was properly handled!

So, putting it all together:

In Apache: enable mod_actions and mod_rewrite. In Gentoo: make sure the lines

LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so

and

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

in httpd.conf are not commented out. In Debian the commands

a2enmod actions

and

a2enmod rewrite

do the trick.

In the httpd.conf add the following:

<Directory /var/www/test>
    <Limit GET POST PUT DELETE HEAD OPTIONS>
        Order allow,deny
        # You might want something a little more secure here, this is a dev setup
        Allow from all
    </Limit>
    <LimitExcept GET POST PUT DELETE HEAD OPTIONS>
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
    </LimitExcept>
    Script PUT /var/www/test/put.php
    Script DELETE /var/www/test/put.php
</Directory>

And finally, in the .htaccess add the rewrite voodoo:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /test
RewriteRule ^/?(api)/? put.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} (PUT|DELETE)
RewriteRule .* put.php

Hopefully this works as well for you as it did for me. Now to get back to business of actually writing the code to deal with the request and dispatch it appropriately (which may be a post for another day, or you can have a look at how some others have done it.)

By the way, for testing I have found the Firefox plugin Poster to be immensely useful, as well as the Java based RESTClient.

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I went through the standard checks, checking the file permissions, .htaccess settings, and so on, to no avail. A quick Google search pointed me to the fix from Victor Trac. He found the offending bit in the new broken out config in /etc/apache2/modules.d/00_default_settings.conf where it contains:

<Directory />

        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
</Directory>

The fix is either to change that to Allow from all and define Deny where needed in each virtual host or to override it in every virtual host. Since I tend to set up my hosts with the idea that the server allows everything and it is up to the host to deny where needed I chose the first option, reloaded Apache and everything is sweet again.

Edit:

I found I was having an error with the RewriteRules after switching from Apache 2.0.x to 2.2.x – I found the fix on the Gentoo forums, which required adding an extra RewriteCond line in the .htaccess file.

The old .htaccess: and the new:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

and the new:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond $1 !\.php$
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Technorati Tags: Apache 2.2, 403, Gentoo

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Since I do a great deal of development again MySQL I needed to install that as well, and figured that I would probably need the GD functionality as well so I grabbed libjpeg and libpng to make those work as well. This is the step-by-step.

(Props to James Pelow and his article from last year, from which I borrowed the configure command lines and configuration modifications, as well as the idea of installing the whole mess in /apache2.)

Download the latest MySQL (I used the package version) from MySQL.

Installation is straightforward following the same methods as any other Mac installer.

Download and install libjpeg and libpng – from Ethan Tira-Thompson (this is also in a Mac installer which contains both libraries in one installer).

Download the latest Apache httpd server (Unix source) from Apache

in the terminal:

tar -xzvf httpd-2.2.6.tar.gz && cd httpd-2.2.6

./configure

--prefix=/apache2

--enable-module=most

--enable-shared=max

make

sudo make install

sudo mkdir /apache2/php

Download the latest PHP from PHP

tar -xzvf php-5.2.4.tar.gz && cd php-5.2.4

./configure

--prefix=/apache2/php

--with-zlib

--with-xml

--with-ldap=/usr

--enable-cli

--with-zlib-dir=/usr

--enable-exif

--enable-ftp

--enable-mbstring

--enable-mbregex

--enable-dbx

--enable-sockets

--with-iodbc=/usr

--with-curl=/usr

--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql

--with-gd

--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local

--with-png-dir=/usr/local

--with-apxs2=/apache2/bin/apxsmake

sudo make install

sudo cp php.ini-dist /apache2/php/lib/php.ini

Now to make your Apache2.2 a little more ‘Mac’ – you can point it at the Mac web shared files folder, change the user and group and change the location for user files to match the Mac folder system.

Edit httpd.conf (I use nano, you can use any flat text editor like nano, pico, vi, emacs or even BBedit)

sudo nano -w /apache2/conf/httpd.conf

The changes to httpd.conf I made:
I changed

User daemon

Group daemon

to

User www

Group www

and

DocumentRoot "/apache2/htdocs"

to

DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

and

<Directory "/apache2/htdocs">

to

<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">

and added

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

Edit httpd-userdir.conf

sudo nano -w /apache2/conf/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

The changes to httpd-userdir.conf I made:
I changed

UserDir public_html

to

UserDir Sites

To start and stop the server:
MySQL comes with a Preference Pane that allows you to start and stop it there. To start and stop Apache you need to first make sure that the default Apache shipped with OS X is stopped.

sudo /apache2/bin/apachectl start

sudo /apache2/bin/apachectl stop

I only ran into one issue, when trying to start the server I ran against the following error message (and no running server, of course):

httpd: Syntax error on line 53 of /apache2/conf/httpd.conf:

Cannot load /apache2/modules/libphp5.so into server:

Library not loaded: /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.15.dylib

Referenced from: /apache2/modules/libphp5.son  Reason: image not found

To fix this I did the following:

cd /usr/local/mysql/lib

sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql

for i in `ls ./l*`; do sudo ln -sf /usr/local/mysql/lib/$i /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/$i; done

This creates soft links in the directory that libphp5.so is looking for the MySQL libraries.

Then it started right up! Wheee! (I did a quick test by dropping PhpMyAdmin into the /Library/WebServer/Documents folder and browsed to it – the whole Apache/PHP/MySQL is working correctly)

Technorati Tags: Apache 2.2, PHP5, MySQL 5, OS X

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While Apache allows for error documents located at a remote URL (ie anything starting with http://) this causes Apache to send a redirect to the browser, even if the document resides on the same server. This is not a good idea, as the documentation points out.

This has several implications, the most important being that the client will not receive the original error status code, but instead will receive a redirect status code. This in turn can confuse web robots and other clients which try to determine if a URL is valid using the status code. In addition, if you use a remote URL in an ErrorDocument 401, the client will not know to prompt the user for a password since it will not receive the 401 status code. Therefore, if you use an ErrorDocument 401 directive then it must refer to a local document.

Using a local document for handling errors, however, gives you the ability to override the default Apache messages, which are often replaced by the browser with their own, internal error messages (MSIE, I’m talking about you.) Besides giving you the ability to match the error page to your site, you can use some simple PHP to make it more informative for both the end user and the site admin. Instead of just saying “File so-and-so doesn’t exist, sorry” you can make a page that allows the user to send a message to the admin. If you wish, you can have the page automatically mail the information, although that can quickly lead to hundreds of emails as users mis-type urls, spiders follow old links, and scripts search your LAMP site for IIS vulnerabilities. Trust me on that one, it’s a bad idea that won’t outlive the weekend.

With that in mind here a couple samples that you can build from.

Sample 403 error page:

"
$server = $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’];
$uri = $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
$bad_link = $server.$uri;
// Note that the referer cannot be completely trusted
// as some agents either do not set a referer or allow
// the user to modify the referer at will. It is, however,
// often useful for troubleshooting.
$referer = $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’];
$remote = $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’];
print "
403: Forbidden

 

";
if ($uri == ‘/403/403.php’) {
	print "

You have reached the custom 403 error page for mysite.com. Was it everything you were hoping for?

";
}
else if (substr($uri, -1, 1) == ‘/’) {
    print "

Sorry, this directory cannot be browsed.

If you received this message by clicking on a link on this website, please report it to the webmaster.

";
}
else {
    print "

You have attempted to access a resource () for which you do not have the proper authorization or which is not available from your location.

If you received this message by clicking on a link on this website, please report it to the webmaster.

";
}
print "

";
?>

Sample 404 error page:

"
$server = $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’];
$uri = $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
$bad_link = $server.$uri;
// Note that the referer cannot be completely trusted
// as some agents either do not set a referer or allow
// the user to modify the referer at will. It is, however,
// often useful for troubleshooting.
$referer = $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’];
print "
404: File Not Found

 

";
if ($uri == ‘/404/404.php’) {
    print "

You have reached the custom 404 error page for mysite.com. Was it everything you were hoping for?

";
}
else {
    print "

Sorry, that file () does not seem to exist.

If you received this message by clicking on a link on this website, please report it to the webmaster.

";
}
print "

";
?>

Of course you would make sure the styles, links, mailtos, site name, etc are right for your site, but this gives you an idea.

Technorati Tags: ErrorDocument, Apache, PHP

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Sure, there are plenty of people out there hosting on Apache 1.3.x and still plenty more using PHP 4.x – but I’m not one of them. At the very least I need to have a working Apache 2.0.x and PHP 5.x so I can test before deploying on my production server. There are plenty of guides online to add Apache 2.x and/or PHP5, but nothing on replacing the defaults. While I am all ok with testing on multiple versions, the multiple versions I would rather test on would be 2.0.x as default and 2.2.x as the upgradeability testbed.

I’m sure there is a way to do this, I just have to find it …

Technorati Tags: Apache, PHP, OS X

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Now the question is, do I stick with 2.0.5x or I do I jump on the 2.2 train?

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