Installing Zend Framework 2 on XAMPP in Windows

Question

I know this question may have appeared few times here and in the internet. But still I feel it is not clear for somebody who wanted to enter into the world of frameworks. I

Answer 1

Since I had lot dependency extension problems (mostly .dll files) with old version of XAMPP, so first thing I did was made sure I uninstall all previous versions of PHP already present on my system as well as old XAMPP. Then installed latest XAMPP v3.2.2 (using latest XAMPP 3.2.2-32-bit on Win-7-64-bit). Then followed installation steps in XAMPP Documentation under title Start a New Zend Framework 2 Project.

I had issues while installing composer also with old-XAMPP, but somehow those errors didn't appear during composer installation this time. And, I successfully installed ZEND till I typed http://localhost:8081/myapp/ (I renamed my ZendSkeletonAppliction folder as myapp as per documentation) into my browser to access the same and met the error which said:

Fatal error: Uncaught RuntimeException: Unable to load ZF2. Run php composer.phar install or define a ZF2_PATH environment variable. in C:\xampp\apps\myapp\htdocs\init_autoloader.php:51
Stack trace:
 #0 C:\xampp\apps\myapp\htdocs\public\index.php(18): require()
 #1 {main} thrown in C:\xampp\apps\myapp\htdocs\init_autoloader.php on line 51

Composer.phar was not even present the first time I downloaded ZendSkeletonApplication‐master.zip from Github (there was only composer.json and composer.lock files present). Anyhow I didn't need them since I followed XAMPP Doc which doesn't call composer.phar in command line:

composer create‐project ‐s dev zendframework/skeleton‐application path/to/install

I am not that tech-savvy to know how to 'define a ZF2_PATH environment variable' correctly, so I wasted time looking for solution online, couldn't find any (which is when I stumbled on this forum which also turned out not to have a solution for my query). In the end, in a fit of depression and anxiety, serendipity happened. All I did was as per XAMPP's ZEND documentation I right-clicked inside C:\xampp\apps\myapp\htdocs folder and clicked 'Composer Install' which reinstalled the Zend files from cache. Then refreshed http://localhost:8081/myapp/ and the Zend intro page appeared.