How to override the path of PHP to use the MAMP path?

The fact that the previously accepted answer refers to php 5.3.6, while the current version of MAMP ships with 7.2.1 as the default (as of early 2018), points out that this is not a very sustainable solution. You can make your path update automatically by adding an extra line to your .bash_profile or .zshrc to get the latest version of PHP from /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/ and export that to your path. Here’s how I do it:

# Use MAMP version of PHP
PHP_VERSION=`command ls /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/ | sort -n | tail -1`
export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/${PHP_VERSION}/bin:$PATH

(Use source ~/.bash_profile after making your changes to make sure they take effect.)

As others have mentioned, you will likely also want to modify your shell to use MAMP’s mysql executable, which is located in /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin. However, I do not recommend exporting that folder, because there are a bunch of other executables there, like libtool, that you probably don’t want to be giving priority to over your system installed versions. This issue prevented me from installing a node package recently (libxmljs), as documented here.

My solution was to define and export mysql and mysqladmin as functions:

# Export MAMP MySQL executables as functions
# Makes them usable from within shell scripts (unlike an alias)
mysql() {
    /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql "$@"
}
mysqladmin() {
    /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqladmin "$@"
}
export -f mysql
export -f mysqladmin

I used functions instead of aliases, because aliases don’t get passed to child processes, or at least not in the context of a shell script. The only downside I’ve found is that running which mysql and which mysqladmin will no longer return anything, which is a bummer. If you want to check which mysql is being used and make sure everything is copacetic, use mysql --version instead.

Note: @julianromera points out that zsh doesn’t support exporting functions, so in that case, you’re best off using an alias, like alias mysql='/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql'. Just be aware that your aliases might not be available from subshells (like when executing a shell script).

Everytime you save MAMP config (PHP section), it saves the current version of PHP on ~/.profile file and creates the alias for php, pear and pecl, to point to the current configured version. (Note: you need to check "Make this version available on the command line" option in MAMP)

However, you need to refresh your terminal (open another session) to get this file refreshed. You can also type source ~/.profile to refesh the aliases manually.

If you want to extract this curerent version in a PHP_VERSION variable - as commented above - for further use, you can do:

export PHP_VERSION=`grep "alias php" ~/.profile | cut -d"/" -f6 | cut -c4-`

And then you'll have $PHP_VERSION available with the current version of MAMP.

Finally, if you want to run your php using the current configured version on mamp, you just need to add to your ~/.bash_profile the following:

export PHP_VERSION=`grep "alias php" ~/.profile | cut -d"/" -f6 | cut -c4-`
export PHPRC="/Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/conf/" #point to your php.ini folder to use the same php settings
export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php$PHP_VERSION/bin:$PATH

Now, even script that relies on /usr/bin/env php will read the correct version from Mamp config.

In your home folder /Users/David for exmaple, you can create a .bash_profile. In here you can export variables and then add them to your path.

Open up the file to edit it in your favourite editor, I use vim.

Then you can add in your path

export MAMP_PHP=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin
export PATH="$MAMP_PHP:$PATH"

You want your bit ahead of the $PATH as that already includes /usr/bin which is where the system PHP lives. So the system will always find your MAMP version first.

Save this file and then reboot your Terminal and you'll see that you should get your MAMP version.

To test I use php -v as OSX Lion uses 5.3.10 and my MAMP is using 5.3.6
You can also test using which php which will output the path to your current php executable.