Install on Windows

OpenCATS is known to be deployed in many Windows/WAMP/XAMPP environments. However, the OpenCATS project builds and tests in a Linux/Unix CI environment only. WAMP and XAMPP can work, but Windows-specific behavior is not covered by automated project testing.

Windows prerequisites

Install a Windows web stack that provides:

• PHP 8.4.1 or later within PHP 8

• MariaDB

• Apache or another PHP-capable web server

• phpMyAdmin or another MariaDB administration tool

OpenCATS CI currently tests PHP 8.4.1 and PHP 8.5. XAMPP and WAMP are common Windows choices, but make sure the version you install provides a compatible PHP release or allows you to configure one.

Download OpenCATS

Download the current prepared full release archive from GitHub Releases. The full release archive includes production Composer dependencies. Extract it under your web root, for example:

C:\xampp\htdocs\opencats

If you download source code or clone the repository instead of using a prepared full release archive, install Composer for Windows and run this from the OpenCATS directory:

composer install --no-dev

Start Apache and MariaDB

Open your XAMPP or WAMP control panel and start only the services you need:

• Apache

• MariaDB/MySQL service provided by the stack

Even if the control panel labels the service as MySQL, use a MariaDB-backed stack for the documented OpenCATS path.

Create the database in phpMyAdmin

Open phpMyAdmin, usually at:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

Create a database named opencats. Use UTF-8 character set and collation when available, for example:

CREATE DATABASE opencats CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Create a database user, for example opencats, and grant that user all privileges on the opencats database. Use a strong password and save it for the installer.

Configure parser utility paths on Windows

Document parser utilities are optional, but if you install them, Windows paths in config.php must use escaped backslashes. For example:

define('ANTIWORD_PATH', 'C:\\antiword\\antiword.exe');
define('PDFTOTEXT_PATH', 'C:\\path\\to\\pdftotext.exe');
define('HTML2TEXT_PATH', 'C:\\path\\to\\html2text.exe');
define('UNRTF_PATH', 'C:\\path\\to\\unrtf.exe');

Run the installer

Open your browser at:

http://localhost/opencats/

If an INSTALL_BLOCK file exists before first install, remove it so the installer can start. After installation, confirm INSTALL_BLOCK exists again so the installer is not left exposed.

Continue to Run the Installer.