XAMPP ( or ) is a free and open-source

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

web server solution stack package developed by Apache Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server,

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ori ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

, and

interpreters Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language. The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous interp ...

for scripts written in the

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

and

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s. Since most actual web server deployments use the same components as XAMPP, it makes transitioning from a local test server to a live server possible. XAMPP's ease of deployment means a

WAMP LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) is an acronym denoting one of the most common Software stack, software stacks for many of the web's most popular web application, applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack mode ...

or LAMP stack can be installed quickly and simply on an operating system by a developer, with the advantage that common add-in applications such as

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

and Joomla! can also be installed with similar ease using Bitnami.

Etymology

The term XAMPP is an apparent

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

. However, there is no official acronym expansion specified on the Apache Friends website. Their homepage header reads "XAMPP Apache + MariaDB + PHP + Perl", indicating that this abbreviation is a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

. The term can be unofficially broken down as follows: MySQL was replaced with MariaDB on 19 October 2015 and beginning with XAMPP versions 5.5.30 and 5.6.14, effectively altering the meaning of the acronym. While both letters P are

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...

interchangeable, the convention used at the Apache Friends website indicates that the first letter P is short for PHP and the latter letter P is short for Perl.

Prerequisites

XAMPP requires only one zip,

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bi ...

, 7z, or exe file to be downloaded and run, and little or no configuration of the various components that make up the web server is required. The Windows version of XAMPP requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable.

Features

XAMPP is regularly updated to the latest releases of Apache,

and

. It also comes with a number of other modules, including OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin,

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWi ...

Joomla Joomla (), also spelled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, ...

and more. Self-contained, multiple instances of XAMPP can exist on a single computer, and any given instance can be copied from one computer to another. XAMPP is offered in both a full and a standard version (Smaller version).

Usage

The most obvious characteristic of XAMPP is the ease at which a

webserver stack can be deployed and instantiated. Later, some common packaged applications that could be easily installed were provided by Bitnami. Officially, XAMPP's designers intended it for use only as a development tool, to allow website designers and programmers to test their work on their own computers without any access to the Internet. To make this as easy as possible, many important security features are disabled by default. XAMPP has the ability to serve web pages on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

. A special tool is provided to password-protect the most important parts of the package. XAMPP also provides support for creating and manipulating databases in

and

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

, among others. Once XAMPP is installed, it is possible to treat a

local host In computer networking, localhost is a hostname that refers to the current device used to access it. It is used to access the network services that are running on the host via the loopback network interface. Using the loopback interface bypasses a ...

like a remote host by connecting using an

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

client. Using a program like FileZilla has many advantages when installing a content management system (CMS) like

. It is also possible to connect to localhost via FTP with an

HTML editor An HTML editor is a program for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. For example, many HT ...

Components

References

External links

*
Interview with Kai Seidler from the XAMPP project
— ''interview by Lenz Grimmer, MySQL''
''Installing, Configuring, and Developing with XAMPP''
— ''article by Dalibor D. Dvorski, Skills Canada - Ontario''
Acronym of XAMPP
— ''Taken from Abbreviations.com, a site by STANDS4 LLC''
''XAMPP'' In General
— ''article by Owusu-Ansah Godfred, Global Health Data Management'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Xampp Free web server software Portable software WAMP Web server software Drupal WordPress