Harry Tang

Setup XAMPP with http2/SSL on localhost

XAMPP
XAMPP

Introduction

XAMPP is the most popular PHP development environment for Windows; today, I will show you how to set up XAMPP with http2/SSL on localhost.

Prerequisites

  • A Windows PC
  • Basic knowledge of PHP stack

Download XAMPP

Download the latest version of XAMPP at https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html, then install/extract it to a local folder, e.g. D:\xampp.

Configure MySQL

Edit the D:\xampp\mysql\bin\my.ini file and add the following lines below the [mysqld] section:

default-storage-engine=innodb
character-set-server=utf8

Next, change max_allowed_packet to 10M and innodb_log_file_size to 50M like below:

max_allowed_packet = 10M
innodb_log_file_size = 50M

Configure Apache

Assume that we put our projects in D:\Projects, so we add that directory in httpd.conf, open D:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf, and add the following:

<Directory "D:/Projects">
     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
     AllowOverride All
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
</Directory>

Then edit the block <Directory /> like below:

<Directory />
     AllowOverride all
     Require all granted
</Directory>

Configure PHP

We first made adjustments to the php.ini file by uncommenting these lines:

extension=php_openssl.dll
extension=php_intl.dll

Next, change some values:

expose_php = Off
upload_max_filesize = 20M
post_max_size = 80M
memory_limit=256M
max_execution_time=300
max_input_time=600

Finally, add this line before Dynamic Extensions:

openssl.cafile="\xampp\perl\vendor\lib\Mozilla\CA\cacert.pem";

Use VirtualHost

Open D:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf and add the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin [email protected]
     DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs"
     ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

You can add more VirtualHost for your projects

Enable HTTP2

Open D:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf and uncomment:

LoadModule http2_module modules/mod_http2.so

Then add the following line:

Protocols h2 h2c http/1.1

Finally, open D:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-ssl.conf and edit the SSLCipherSuite like below:

SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256

MISC

For Long name display, we can add .htaccess in htdocs, the .htaccess's content:

Options +Indexes
IndexOptions FancyIndexing FoldersFirst NameWidth=* DescriptionWidth=*

You can also make phpMyAdmin expiration time longer by adding this line to D:\xampp\phpMyAdmin\config.inc.php file:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['LoginCookieValidity'] = 360000;

Last but not least, add PATH Environment Variable in Windows:

D:\xampp\php
D:\xampp\mysql\bin

Conclusion

Your local XAMPP development environment is up and running; happy coding!