This is a sample application for getting started with Couchbase Server and the PHP SDK. The application runs a single page web UI for demonstrating SQL for Documents (N1QL), Sub-document requests and Full Text Search (FTS) querying capabilities. It uses Couchbase Server together with the Laravel web framework for PHP, Vue and Bootstrap.
The application is a flight planner that allows the user to search for and select a flight route (including the return flight) based on airports and dates. Airport selection is done dynamically using an autocomplete box bound to N1QL queries on the server side. After selecting a date, it then searches for applicable air flight routes from a previously populated database. An additional page allows users to search for Hotels using less structured keywords.
To download the application you can either download the archive or clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/couchbaselabs/try-cb-php.git
We recommend running the application with Docker, which starts up all components for you, but you can also run it in a Mix-and-Match style, which we'll decribe below.
You will need Docker installed on your machine in order to run this application as we have defined a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml to run Couchbase Server 7.0.0, the frontend Vue app and the PHP REST API.
To launch the full application you can simply run this command from a terminal:
docker-compose up
NOTE: You may need more than the default RAM to run the images. We have tested the travel-sample apps with 4.5 GB RAM configured in Docker's Preferences... -> Resources -> Memory. When you run the application for the first time, it will pull/build the relevant docker images, so it might take a bit of time.
This will start the PHP backend, Couchbase Server 7.0.0 and the Vue frontend app.
You can access the backend API on http://localhost:8080/, the UI on http://localhost:8081/ and Couchbase Server at http://localhost:8091/.
You should then be able to browse the UI, search for US airports and get flight route information.
To end the application press Control+C in the terminal and wait for docker-compose to gracefully stop your containers.
Instead of running all services, you can start any combination of backend,frontend, db via docker, and take responsibility for starting the other services yourself.
As the provided docker-compose.yml sets up dependencies between the services, to make startup as smooth and automatic as possible, we also provide an alternative mix-and-match.yml. We'll look at a few useful scenarios here.
If you wish to run this application against your own configuration of Couchbase Server, you will need version 7.0.0 or later with the travel-sample bucket setup.
NOTE: If you are not using Docker to start up the Database, or the provided wrapper wait-for-couchbase.sh, you will need to create a full text search index on travel-sample bucket called 'hotels-index'. You can do this via the following command:
curl --fail -s -u <username>:<password> -X PUT \
http://<host>:8094/api/index/hotels-index \
-H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d @fts-hotels-index.json
With a running Couchbase Server, you can edit the database details in the .env file:
CB_HOST=10.144.211.101
CB_USER=Administrator
CB_PSWD=password
Then simply run docker-compose -f mix-and-match.yml up backend frontend.
The Docker image will run the same checks as usual, and also create the hotels-index if it does not already exist.
If you want to run the PHP API yourself without using Docker, you will need to ensure that you have PHP 7.3 or higher installed on your machine. You may still use Docker to run the Database and Frontend components if desired.
Before setting up the PHP SDK, you must install libcouchbase (LCB); version 3.1 or higher is required.
You can now install the SDK through your PHP distribution’s pecl command:
pecl install couchbase
To load the Couchbase SDK extension you will need to locate your php.ini file.
If you run the php --ini command in your shell it will tell you its location.
Configuration File (php.ini) Path: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4
Loaded Configuration File: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/php.ini
Scan for additional .ini files in: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/conf.d
Additional .ini files parsed: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/conf.d/ext-opcache.ini
Depending on whether you are on a Mac, Linux or Windows machine you will need to add the following to the ini file:
Mac/Linux
extension=couchbase.so
Windows
extension=couchbase.dll
Lastly, setup the Composer PHP dependency management tool to ensure you can install the project dependencies.
Now we can install the project dependencies:
composer --ignore-platform-reqs install
The first time you run against a new database image, you may want to use the provided
wait-for-couchbase.sh wrapper to ensure that all indexes are created.
For example, using the Docker image provided:
docker-compose -f mix-and-match.yml up -d db
export CB_HOST=localhost
./wait-for-couchbase.sh echo Couchbase is ready!
Update the .env file with your Couchbase Server details (i.e. CB_HOST=localhost) and then run:
php artisan config:clear
php artisan serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080
Finally, if you want to see how the sample frontend Vue application works with your changes, run it with:
docker-compose -f mix-and-match.yml up frontend
To run the frontend components manually without Docker, follow the guide here
All the travel-sample apps conform to the same interface, which means that they can all be used with the same database configuration and Vue.js frontend.
To ensure that every app conforms to the API, we have a test suite, which you can simply run with the command:
docker-compose --profile test up test
If you are running locally though, with a view to extending or modifying the travel-sample app, you will likely want to be able to make changes to both the code and the tests in parallel.
- Start the backend server locally, for example using "Running the backend manually" above.
- Check out the test suite repo in a separate working directory, and run the tests manually, as per the instructions.