How To Install Testlink With Xampp Tutorial

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  • TestLink Tutorial

TestLink Tutorial: A Complete Guide. Details Last Updated: 19 November 2018. What is TestLink? Test-link is most widely used web based open source test management tool. It synchronizes both requirements specification and test specification together. User can create test project and document test cases using this tool. In this tutorial, we. How to Install XAMPP for Windows - Steps Open the XAMPP website. Click XAMPP for Windows. Double-click the downloaded file. Click Yes when prompted. Select aspects of XAMPP to install. Select an installation location. Uncheck the 'Learn more about Bitnami' box, then. Install and configure Testlink 1.9.13 (Stormbringer) In Ubuntu - Azure In this guide i will go through the steps in the configuring Testlink ( 1.9.13 (Stormbringer)in Azure. I have already configured the virtual machine and the name as testlink.cloudapp.net.

  • TestLink Useful Resources
  • Selected Reading

Following are some points to note before we go for the installation of TestLink.

TestlinkHow

  • TestLink is a web application; it provides a private website to an individual or a set of requested users belonging to the same company/project.

  • TestLink can be run at the server side.

  • TestLink is a PHP based application and supports all OS platforms such as Windows, Linux of different versions, MAC, etc.

  • TestLink supports all famous browsers such as Chrome, IE, Mozilla, and Safari.

System Requirements

Since TestLink is a web-application it follows the concept of client/server. It means that TestLink can be installed centrally on a server and users can interact with it through web browsers using a website from any computer.

  • Web Server − TestLink supports Apache 2.2.2.1. However, it can work with any latest web server software. TestLink only uses .php file. Configure the web server with .php extension only.

  • PHP − The web server should support PHP. It can be installed as CGI or any other integration technology. It is recommended to use 5.3.8 PHP version.

  • Mandatory PHP Extensions − Extensions for RDBMS are mysqli, pgsql, oci8, sqlsrv.Mbstring is required for Unicode – UTF-8 support.

  • Optional Extensions − Curl, GD, Fileinfo

  • Database − TestLink requires database to store its data. MySQL (5.5.16) is recommended.

  • FileZilla FTP Server − FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.39 is required to install XAMPP as optional.

You can install all the requirements separately either manually or through an automatic process to use TestLink.

Installation of System Requirements

If the user has required knowledge about the installation process, the user can install all the discussed requirements one-by-one separately before proceeding to TestLink.

Alternatively, there are many all-in-one packages available and can automatically install in the system by exe file. Here, we will take the help of XAMPP to install the pre-requisites easily.

Step 1 − Go to https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html and click XAMPP for Windows as shown in the following screenshot.

Step 2 − A pop-up will be displayed to save the file. Click Save File. It will start to download the file.

Step 3 − Run the .exe file to run the installation wizard. After clicking the .exe file, the XAMPP Setup wizard is displayed as shown in the following screenshot. Click Next.

Step 4 − Next, the wizard displays all the component files (shown in the following screenshot) that will be installed. Click Next after selecting the components.

Step 5 − Provide a folder name where XAMPP will be installed and click Next.

Step 6 − Ready to Install wizard is displayed. Click Next to start the installation.

Step 7 − After successful installation, it will prompt to start the control panel. Select the checkbox and click Finish. It will open the XAMPP control panel as displayed in the following screenshot.

Step 8 − Click the Start button for Apache and MySQL required for TestLink as shown in the above screenshot.

Step 9 − To verify whether all the pre-requisites such as Apache, PHP and MySQL is installed properly, navigate to any of the browser and type http://localhost. Then, press Enter.

Step 10 − It will display the dashboard of XAMPP. Click phpAdmin at the right top corner of the screenshot.

It will display General Settings, Application Settings, Details of Database, Web Server and phpMyAdmin as shown in the following screenshot.

If the installation is not proper, this page won’t display. Till this point, all the pre-requisites are successfully installed in the system.

Install and Launch TestLink

After successful installation of XAMPP, we need to work with TestLink.

Step 1 − Go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/testlink/ and click Download.

Step 2 − Now unzip the downloaded .tar file and rename the folder name as TestLink.

Step 3 − Go to XAMPP folder where it is installed and navigate to htdocs folder. Place the TestLink folder here as shown in the following screenshot.

Step 4 − Go to TestLink package and open “config.inc.php” file, update path “$tlCfg→log_path” and “$g_repositoryPath” as below −

$tlCfg→log_path = ‘D:/xampp/htdocs/testlink/logs/’;

$g_repositoryPath = ‘D:/xampp/htdocs/testlink/upload area/’;

Step 5 − Now open a browser and type http://localhost/Testlink in the navigation bar and press Enter. It will display the installation page of TestLink.

Step 6 − Click New Installation.

Step 7 − Check the checkbox for Terms and Conditions and click the Continue button.

The system will check the pre-requisites to ensure everything is fine. A Continue button will appear at the bottom, otherwise an error message will be displayed.

Step 8 − Click Continue as shown in the following screenshot.

Step 9 − In the next step, Database Admin and Admin password is required to define MySQL access. TestLink admin username/password can be anything given by the user.

Database login/password: root/<empty> (Default login/password of MYSQL for xampp)

Step 10 − Click “Process TestLink Setup” button. You should see the TestLink “Installation was successful!” message being displayed.

Step 11 − Now again navigate to http://localhost/testlink

You will see the login page as shown in the following screenshot.

What is XAMPP?

XAMPP is an open source cross platform web server, MySQL database engine, and PHP and Perl package. It is compiled and maintained by apache. The acronym XAMPP stands for;

  • X – [cross platform operating systems] meaning it can run on any OS Mac OX , Windows , Linux etc.
  • A – Apache - this is the web server software.
  • M – MySQL - Database.
  • P – PHP
  • P – Perl – scripting language

Why use XAMPP?

  • In order to use PHP, you will need to install PHP, Apache and may be even MySQL. It’s not easy to install Apache and configure it. If you install Apache on its own, you will still have to set it up and integrate it with PHP and Perl among other things. XAMPP deals with all the complexity in setting up and integrating with PHP and Perl. Unlike Java that runs with the Java SDK only, PHP requires a web server to work
  • XAMPP provides an easy to use control panel to manage Apache, MySQL and other programs such as Tomcat, filezilla etc. You don’t have to memorize commands for starting apache, MySQL etc.

In this tutorial, you will learn-

How to Download and Install XAMPP

We look into step by step process to install XAMPP for Windows. For Other Operating Systems, installation steps are similar.

  • Download the XAMPP installer at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
  • Installation XAMPP is just like installing any other windows program. There are however, a few things that we must note.
  • After you have downloaded XAMPP, run the setup. The warning message dialog window shown below appears.
  • If you are using windows Vista or Windows 7, make sure that you deactivate the User Account Control feature. To do this, Select Control Panel > User Accounts > Change User Access Control settings. The diagram below illustrates the main steps.
  • After you have deactivated the User Account Control, click on OK button on the warning message box.
  • This time you get following message
  • In the succeeding screen, click next
  • In the next screen, Change the installation path if required. Click Next
  • In the next screen select Apache and MySQL. You may optionally select FileZilla (FTP Client) if needed. Click Install

Note a service is a long-running program in windows that does not require user intervention. Services can be set to run automatically whenever the windows operating system is started. For you to use Apache and MySQL, they are supposed to be running in the background. Installing them as services runs both Apache and MySQL automatically in the background whenever you power up your computer. If you have not installed Apache and MySQL as services, then you have to manually start them every time that you want to use them. You will have to do this from the XAMPP control panel.PHP and

  • On successful completion of installation, you will see following window
  • Click on Finish button

Before we test our XAMPP installation, let’s first look at the basic directories that we will be working with.

Basic Web server configuration

This tutorial assumes that you have installed XAMPP on drive C in Windows using the steps mentioned above. The following is a list of the basic directories that you are supposed to be aware of.

  • htdocs; this is the web root directory. All of our PHP codes will be placed in this directory.
  • mysql – this directory contains all the information related to MySQL database engine, by default it runs on port 3306.
  • php – this directory contains PHP installation files. It contains an important file named php.ini. This directory is used to configure how PHP behaves on your server.

By default, the Apache web server runs on port 80. If port 80 is taken by another web server, you can use a different port number. For this tutorial we will assume we are using port 80. Note,If you use SKYPE , it uses the same port. Close Skype if you want to use Apache on port 80

XAMPP Control Panel

The control panel is used to manage programs installed via XAMPP. To open the XAMPP control panel,

  • Click on start menu
  • Explore the programs directory and locate Apace Friends then XAMPP as shown in the diagram below
  • The diagram below shows the control panel.

1) This section lists the installed services, modules and the process IDs PID(s). A green tick means the module has been installed as a service. The red mark means it has not been installed as a service. To install a service, click on the red mark. If the button shows a green tick and you click on it, the control panel will ask you if you want to uninstall the system.

2) This section shows Port(s) associated with the modules. The actions section is for;

  1. starting and stopping modules
  2. Open the administrative windows for Apache and MySQL
  3. Open configuration files for Apache, MySQL etc. to make changes
  4. View log files for the modules

3) This section contains useful utilities such as Netsat, windows services short cuts etc.

4) This section displays status information on the modules. The control panel can be used to;

  • Install and uninstall services such as Apache, MySQL etc. that are installed via XAMPP
  • Start and stop services.
  • Open configure files etc.

Configure XAMPP

Let’s now look at the basic configurations required before we start using our XAMPP installation for developing PHP powered web sites. Type the URL http://localhost/xampp/ in your favorite browser. For this tutorial, we will be using Firefox as our web browser.

If you are able to see the above screen then you have installed XAMPP successfully. The panel on the left hand side contains links to useful information such as;

  • The version of PHP installed
  • Security settings of XAMPP
  • Access to utilities such as phpMyAdmin etc.

The PHP version shipped with XAMPP 1.8.0 is PHP 5.4.4

What is the best PHP IDE?

A PHP IDE is a program that allows you to easily write PHP codes. PHP IDEs are often equipped with syntax highlighting features and in some cases autocomplete features too. This means that if you write a PHP keyword that is known by the PHP interpreter, then the keyword will be highlighted a different color from the one used for regular statements. The autocomplete features automatically pops up known PHP keywords as you type them. Notepad can also be used to write and editor PHP codes. The disadvantage of using an editor such as Notepad is that debugging the scripts becomes difficult because it is not easy to spot errors such as misspelt keywords, unclosed braces etc. an IDE will highlight the statements with errors so it’s easy for you to spot them. The table shown below shows 5 popular PHP editors
EditorLicenseCross PlatformBrief description
Netbeans IDE Open Source Yes
  • Dedicated PHP coding environment with syntax highlighting and code completion for keywords and other known information.
  • Supports integration with PHP MVC frameworks i.e. Zend,
  • Code History that shows the changes made to a file
  • SFTP,FTP and SVN via plugins.
Dreamweaver Commercial Yes
  • Supports HTML and PHP.
  • Syntax highlighting, code folding and completion for keywords and other known information.
  • Supports SFTP and FTP.
Zend studio Commercial Yes
  • Integrated with Zend Server and Zend PHP MVC framework, PHPUnit, phpDocumentor etc.
  • Has syntax highlighting, code folding,
  • Support for Web services etc.
PHP Eclipse Open Source Yes
  • Code formatter
  • Supports SVN, SHH/FTP
Notepad ++ Freeware Windows only
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Supports SFTP and FTP via plugins.

Netbeans IDE PHP editor As briefly highlighted in the above table, Netbeans IDE has powerful features that enhance the productive of PHP coders. The IDE can be freely downloaded from the http://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html

  • Syntax highlighting and auto-complete features enhances your productivity
  • It has native support for database systems like MySQL. You don’t need to use two programs to code and develop your database.
  • The IDE can be used in a collaborative environment. This comes in handy when you have to work with other developers as a team.
  • The IDE has support for other languages such as;
    • Java SE
    • Java EE
    • C
    • C++

The current version of the Netbeans IDE as of this writing is version 7.3

Introduction to Netbeans IDE

After you have successfully installed the Netbeans IDE PHP editor, run the program just like any other windows program. The window shown below appears

1. Project explorer – this panel is used to display all the opened projects. The projects are listed in a tree view.

2. Shortcuts tool bar – this toolbar contains shortcuts to frequently performed tasks such as creating a new project, opening an existing project, undo and redo actions etc.

3. Startup page – this page contains 3 tabs namely- Learn & Discover, My Netbeans and What’s New.

  • The first tab [Learn and Discover] introduces you to the features of the Netbeans IDE, showcases some demos and tutorials that can be developed in the Netbeans IDE.
  • The second tab [My Netbeans] lists the recently opened projects, allows you to install plugins and activate features of the IDE.

4. Output window – it is used to display output from programs such as Java console applications. It is also used to display log and debug information. The screenshot below shows the IDE with a project open.

Creating a new PHP project using the Netbeans IDE

  • Click on the create new project button on the tool bar as shown below
  • If you downloaded all the bundles available in the Netbeans IDE, make sure you choose PHP under project category, PHP Application under Projects then click on Next button.
  • Enter the project name as shown below.

How To Install Xampp Server

  • Make sure the folder is saved in the XAMPP installation directory as shown above.
  • Click on next button when done.
  • Make sure Run as: is set to Local Web Site(running on local web server)
    • The Project URL: is set to http://localhost/phplessons/

Note the above settings will be set for you by default. You don’t have to change anything unless you are an expert

  • Click on Next button
  • The Netbeans PHP editor allows for integration with PHP MVC frameworks such as Symfony and Zend. For now we will not select any MVC framework. Click on Finish button.
  • Your newly created project will be displayed in the project browser and an index.php page created for you.
  • The newly create page contains some html code. Replace it with the following code shown below.

Running your first PHP Example

  • Click on the run button on the toolbar as shown below
  • Your default browser will be opened with the URL http://localhost/phplessons/index.php . The output “Hello World!” will be displayed in your browser.

Summary

  • XAMPP is the acronym for X-cross platform, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl
  • A PHP editor is a program that allows you to write PHP code within the shortest possible time and allows you to debug your syntax errors at design time.
  • Netbeans PHP editor is a cross platform open source editor that enhances the productivity of PHP developers.