The current recommended releases of PHP are available for download from the downloads page of the php.net site at:
http://www.php.net/downloads.php
From this page, you can download the latest stable release of PHP 5 and then follow the steps shown below to install PHP in your system. For further assistance along the way, you may consult the Installation and Configuration manual available on the php.net website at: http://www.php.net/manual/install.php. Alternatively, you might read the install.txt file that is shipped with PHP.
Here are the basic installation steps for PHP 5 on Windows:
Extract the distribution file into the
c:\phpdirectory.Add the
C:\phpdirectory to the PATH to makephp5ts.dllavailable to the Web server modules.Rename
php.ini-recommendedtophp.ini.In
php.ini, set thedoc_rootto your Apachehtdocsdirectory. For example:
doc_root = c:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs
In
php.ini, uncomment the SOAP extension line in theWindows Extensionssection:
extension=php_soap.dll
In
php.ini, uncomment the OCI8 extension line:
extension=php_oci8.dll
Note
It is assumed here that you will be using an Oracle database when following the book examples. If you're going to use MySQL, you need to uncomment the extension=php_mysql.dll and extension=php_mysqli.dll lines in php.ini instead.
In
php.ini, set theextension_dirdirective to the directory in which the extention DLLs reside:
extension_dir= c:\php\ext
In the Apache
httpd.confconfiguration file, to install PHP as an Apache module, insert two lines that lookslike this:
LoadModule php5_module "c:/php/php5apache2.dll" AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
In the Apache
httpd.confconfiguration file, configure the path tophp.ini:
PHPIniDir "C:/php"
Restart Apache.
As an alternative to the above manual installation, you might use the Windows PHP installer that is also available from the downloads page of the php.net website.
Note
Although the Windows PHP installer is the fastest way to make PHP work, it doesn't allow you to set every option as you might want to. So, using the installer isn't the recommended method for installing PHP.
Once you have PHP installed on your Windows system, you might want to set some extensions for added functionality. It is important to note that many extensions are built into the Windows version of PHP. To use these extensions, you just uncomment them in the php.ini configuration file—no additional DLLs are required. However, some of the extensions require extra DLLs to work. For example, the PHP OCI8 extension needs the Oracle Client libraries if you have your Oracle database and Web server running on different machines. The above steps assume that you have both the database and Web server installed on the same computer. In this case, you already have all the required Oracle components, and no Instant Client is required.
Here are basic installation steps for PHP 5 on Unix-like systems:
Extract the distribution file:
# gunzip php-5xx.tar.gz # tar -xvf php-5xx.tar
Change dir to the directory containing the PHP sources:
# cd php-5xx
Set the
ORACLE_HOMEenvironment variable:
# export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
Configure your PHP installation:
# ./configure \ --with-oci8=$ORACLE_HOME \ --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \ --with-config-file-path=/usr/local/apache2/conf \ --enable-sigchild --enable-soap
Note
It is assumed here that you will be using an Oracle database XE when following the book examples. However, if you're going to use MySQL, you must use --with-mysql and --with-mysqli=mysql_config_path/mysql_config configuration options, where mysql_config_path is the path to the mysql_config program that comes with MySQL.
Compile and then install PHP:
# make # make install
Set up
php.ini:
Edit the
httpd.confApache configuration file to load the PHP module into Apache:
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
In
httpd.conf, add handlers for files with the.phpand.phpsextensions:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
Restart Apache:
# usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
By now you should have a working Apache/PHP Web server.