Letterpress

This is a web-based clone of the popular iOS word-game Letterpress using purely PHP and Javascript.

Dev Setup Instructions

Minimum Requirements

• Running Apache Server
• PHP 5.3.6+. May work on PHP 5.2.x for now, but no guarantees it will continue to work going forward
• MySQL Server + Client
• git client v1.7+

Setup Instructions

1. Fork and Clone GitHub repo

   • Fork the repo on github by going to https://github.com/meetrajesh/letterpress and clicking 'Fork' on the top-right-hand corner.
   • Change into your phpwebroot folder (where you store all your PHP projects) and git clone your new fork: git clone https://github.com/[username]/letterpress.git. Remember where you do this checkout. You will need it later. Recommended location is ~/phpwebroot

2. Setup Apache VHost

   • Setup a vhost in your apache config file as shown below. On Mac, the config file lives inside /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. On Linux, it's typically at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Depends on your distro.

     ### for letterpress ###
     <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName localhost
       DocumentRoot "[webroot]>"
       <Directory "[webroot]">
         Options +FollowSymlinks
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from all
         AllowOverride All
       </Directory>
     </VirtualHost>
     

   • Replace [webroot] with the full path of the parent directory that contains your letterpress git repo that you checked out in the previous step. So if you checked out your repo at /home/john/phpwebroot/letterpress, your [webroot] will be /home/john/phpwebroot

   • The AllowOverride All line is important. Don't forget it. It allows you to setup URL rewriting rules via an Apache-specific .htaccess config file which you can view here: https://github.com/meetrajesh/letterpress/blob/master/.htaccess

   • Restart Apache for the changes to take effect: sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart on Linux, and sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart on Mac OS X.

3. Setup MySQL DB

   • Import the MySQL database schema locally. I've assumed you have a blank user with a blank password that has admin (or at least database creation) privileges:

     $ mysqladmin create letterpress
     $ mysql letterpress < /home/john/phpwebroot/letterpress/schema.sql
     

4. Override Config

   • Create a file called init.local.php in your letterpress root directory and copy+paste this in there:

     <?php
     
     define('BASE_URL', 'http://localhost');
     define('IS_DEV', true);
     define('CSRF_SECRET', '<put some random string here thats about 40 chars long>');
     
     // database credentials
     define('DBHOST', 'localhost');
     define('DBUSER', '');
     define('DBPASS', '');
     define('DBNAME', 'letterpress');
     

   • Replace your local database credentials if different from the constants above.

   • Replace the CSRF secret with a randomly generated string. Use this PHP code if you want to generate a 32-character random string:

     $secret = '';
     foreach (range(1, 32) as $i) {
         $secret .= chr(rand(33, 126));
     }
     echo $secret;
     

5. Navigate to http://localhost/letterpress on your browser. If everything was set up properly, the game should load successfully. If not, ping me at rajesh@meetrajesh.com and we'll work it out together.

Pull Request

1. Once you're done committing and pushing all your changes to your fork, submit a pull request using github from your master branch to my master branch.

2. Please try to adhere to the coding style already found in the project before you submit your pull request. Most notably:

   • Tabs instead of spaces for indentation (except in README.md where we use spaces)
   • Opening brace on same line. Closing brace on new line.
   • Braces mandatory even for 1-line cases
   • Exactly 1-space before opening brace
   • Exactly 1-space after these keywords: if, elseif, for, foreach, while, and switch
   • Exactly 1-space after commas in argument lists