Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Installing PEAR Modules

PEAR stands for "PHP Extension and Application Repository" and is the PHP version of Perl CPAN.  Several PEAR modules have been used throughout this book, and they are very useful. The DBA tool ("DBA_Helper", Chapter 7) also uses several PEAR modules.  The same way Perl comes with "cpan" executable, PHP comes with "pear".

In the installation, pear is in /usr/local/bin with the rest of the PHP executables. As the PHP installation was performed by user root, PEAR modules should also be manipulated by root. The first step in this process is to see how pear can help by executing "pear help":

pear help
Usage: pear [options] command [command-options] <parameters>
Type "pear help options" to list all options.
Type "pear help <command>" to get the help for the specified command.

Commands:

build                  Build an Extension From C Source
bundle                 Unpacks a Pecl Package
clear-cache            Clear XML-RPC Cache
config-get             Show One Setting
config-help            Show Information About Setting
config-set             Change Setting
config-show            Show All Settings
cvsdiff                Run a "cvs diff" for all files in a
package
cvstag                 Set CVS Release Tag
download               Download Package
download-all           Downloads each available package from
master_server
info                   Display information about a package
install                Install Package
list                   List Installed Packages
list-all               List All Packages
list-upgrades          List Available Upgrades
login                  Connects and authenticates to remote
server
logout                 Logs out from the remote server
makerpm                Builds an RPM spec file from a PEAR
package
package                Build Package
package-dependencies   Show package dependencies
package-validate       Validate Package Consistency
remote-info            Information About Remote Packages
remote-list            List Remote Packages
run-tests              Run Regression Tests
search                 Search remote package database
shell-test             Shell Script Test
sign                   Sign a package distribution file
uninstall              Un-install Package
upgrade                Upgrade Package
upgrade-all            Upgrade All Packages

PEAR comes with several preinstalled packages, although the versions are not quite current. The versions can be seen by using the "pear list" command like this:

pear list
Installed packages:
===================
Package        Version State
Archive_Tar    1.1     stable
Console_Getopt 1.2     stable
PEAR           1.3.3   stable
XML_RPC        1.1.0   stable

To upgrade the existing packages to their current versions use "pear upgrade-all":

pear upgrade-all
Will upgrade archive_tar
Will upgrade pear
Will upgrade xml_rpc
downloading Archive_Tar-1.2.tar ...
Starting to download Archive_Tar-1.2.tar (-1 bytes)
....................done: 83,456 bytes
downloading PEAR-1.3.5.tar ...
Starting to download PEAR-1.3.5.tar (-1 bytes)
...done: 557,056 bytes
downloading XML_RPC-1.2.0.tar ...
Starting to download XML_RPC-1.2.0.tar (-1 bytes)
...done: 104,960 bytes
upgrade-all ok: Archive_Tar 1.2
upgrade-all ok: XML_RPC 1.2.0
upgrade-all ok: PEAR 1.3.5

It is easy to see what is available. Using "pear list-all" readily reveals the list of available packages that can be installed. Because this list would be very long, it is not shown here. Instead of looking for all the packages, only those that are really needed will be searched for; the ones that have either "HTML" or "DB" in their name. The command to use is pear list-all|egrep "HTML|DB":

pear list-all|egrep "HTML|DB"
DB                        1.6.8
DBA                       1.1
DB_ado                    1.3
DB_DataObject             1.7.2
DB_ldap                   1.1.0
DB_NestedSet              1.2.4
DB_odbtp                  1.0.2
DB_Pager                  0.7
DB_QueryTool              0.11.1
MDB                       1.3.0
MDB_QueryTool             0.11.1
HTML_BBCodeParser         1.1
HTML_Common               1.2.1
HTML_Crypt                1.2.2
HTML_CSS                  0.2.0
HTML_Form                 1.1.2
HTML_Javascript           1.1.0
HTML_Menu                 2.1.1
HTML_Progress             1.2.0
HTML_QuickForm            3.2.4pl1
HTML_QuickForm_Controller 1.0.4
HTML_Select_Common        1.1
HTML_Table                1.5
HTML_Table_Matrix         1.0.7
HTML_Template_Flexy       1.2.1
HTML_Template_IT          1.1
HTML_Template_PHPLIB      1.3.1
HTML_Template_Sigma       1.1.2
HTML_Template_Xipe        1.7.6
HTML_TreeMenu             1.1.9
XML_HTMLSax               2.1.2

In this book, DB, HTML_Form and HTML_Table were used. In order to install HTML_Table and HTML_Form packages, HTML_Common is also needed. These packages can now be installed by issuing the "pear install" command with the appropriate arguments:

pear install DB HTML_Common HTML_Table HTML_Form
downloading DB-1.6.8.tar ...
Starting to download DB-1.6.8.tar (-1 bytes)
....................................................................................................................done: 576,000 bytes
downloading HTML_Common-1.2.1.tar ...
Starting to download HTML_Common-1.2.1.tar (-1 bytes)
...done: 16,896 bytes
downloading HTML_Table-1.5.tar ...
Starting to download HTML_Table-1.5.tar (-1 bytes)
...done: 36,864 bytes
downloading HTML_Form-1.1.2.tar ...
Starting to download HTML_Form-1.1.2.tar (-1 bytes)
...............................done: 145,920 bytes
install ok: HTML_Form 1.1.2
install ok: HTML_Common 1.2.1
install ok: DB 1.6.8
install ok: HTML_Table 1.5
 

If the "pear list" command from the beginning of this chapter is executed, notice that the list of the installed package has changed, just as was desired.

pear list
Installed packages:
===================
Package        Version State
Archive_Tar    1.2     stable
Console_Getopt 1.2     stable
DB             1.6.8   stable
HTML_Common    1.2.1   stable
HTML_Form      1.1.2   stable
HTML_Table     1.5     stable
PEAR           1.3.5   stable
XML_RPC        1.2.0   stable

These packages are installed in the /usr/local/lib/php directory, and the HTML packages are installed in the /usr/local/lib/php/HTML directory. That is why we include them by putting a command like require_once("HTML/Form.php")  into our script. The subdirectory "HTML" is in the include path (defined by parameter described above) and the file Form.php is in that subdirectory.

$ ls -l /usr/local/lib/php/HTML/Form.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 95015 Feb 27 02:07 /usr/local/lib/php/HTML/Form.php

Unfortunately, some of the packages have very poor documentation and the only way to learn how to use them is to read the package source code. HTML_Form is one such package. PEAR packages are being updated daily and are documented on

http://pear.php.net.   When the new version arrives, the existing version can be upgraded by issuing "pear upgrade <pkg-name>".

The PEAR installer is simple and very practical.  The Linux configuration is now complete and the PEAR packages are ready to be used. This concludes the installation on Linux. The next few sections repeat this process on Microsoft Windows 2000. Installing on Windows 2000 is quite a bit easier than installing on Linux. 

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