Installation Of Php In Windows Linux Mac

Setup and Installation:

Since PHP is a server-side technology, you should naturally expect to invest some time in setting up a server environment for production, development or learning.

To be frank, PHP is quite easy to set up compared to other monsters like J2EE. Nevertheless, the procedures are complicated by the various combinations of different versions of web server, PHP and database (most often MySQL).

Below I will introduce the steps needed to set up a working PHP environment with MySQL database.

Linux :

If your desktop runs on Linux, chances are that Apache, PHP, and MySQL are already installed for you. This wildly popular configuration is commonly referred to as LAMP, i.e. Linux Apache MySQL PHP, or P, the latter 'P', can also refer to Perl another major player in the opensource web service arena.

If some components are not installed, you will likely have to manually install the following packages :

Apache or Lighttpd
PHP
MySQL or Postgres
The PHP integration plugin for the database.

Debian or its derivatives :

On Debian or its derivatives, Ubuntu included[1], you can use the corresponding commands:

apt-get install php5
## Server
#### If you wish to use Apache
apt-get install apache2
## -or
#### If you wish to use Lighttpd
apt-get install lighttpd
## Database
#### If you wish to use Postgres
apt-get install postgres-server postgres-client php5-pg
## -or-
#### If you wish to use Mysql
apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client php5-mysql

^ If you chose to use Ubuntu with Apache and MySQL you might wish to utilize the Ubuntu community site for such a configuration ubuntu lamp wiki.

For Gentoo Linux users, the gentoo-wiki has this HowTo available: Apache2 with PHP and MySQL.

In general, you'll want to do the following under Gentoo:

emerge apache
emerge mysql
emerge mod_php

RPM-based :

The exact procedures depend on your Linux distribution. On a Fedora system, the commands are typically as follows:

yum install httpd
yum install php
yum install mysql
yum install php-mysql

It's impossible to cover all the variants here, so consult your Linux distribution's manual for more details, or grab a friend to do it for you.

One sure-fire way of getting PHP up and running on your *nix system is to compile it from source. This isn't as hard as it may sound and there are good instructions available in the PHP manual.

Windows :

Contrary to what some people may think, PHP on Windows is a very popular option. On a Windows platform, you have the option to use either the open source Apache web server, or the native Internet Information Services (IIS) server from Microsoft, which can be installed from your Windows CD.

When you have one of these servers installed, you can download and install the appropriate PHP Windows binaries distributions from PHP download page. The installer version requires less user-interaction.

For increased performance you will want to use FastCGI. There is a wikibook that will assist you on Setting up IIS with FastCGI.

Databases :

On Microsoft Windows you must always install your own database. Two popular choices are the open source Postgres, and MySQL. Postgres is more liberally licensed, and is free to use for commercial purposes.

Postgresql :

Official Zend documentation: http://us.php.net/pgsql Postgres is simple and easy to install, browse to http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/binary/v8.3.0/win32/ and download the exe and double-click.

MySQL :

Official MySQL documentation: http://us.php.net/mysql

You might wish to install the MySQL database. You can download the Windows version of MySQL, and follow the installation instructions. If you have PHP 4, you do not need to install the equivalence of php-mysql on Linux, as MySQL support is built-in in Windows distributions of PHP. In PHP 5 you will need to uncomment the following line in your php.ini file (that is, remove the ';' at the beginning of the line):

;extension=php_mysql.dll

Bundled Package :

If you find all the above too much a hassle, you have another option. Driven by the eternal desire to do things the safe/easy way, several conveniently packaged AMP bundles of Apache/MySQL/PHP can be found on the net.

One of them is PHPTriad. Or, you can try Uniform Server. It is a small WAMP Package. 1 click install and also easy to use. Same with XAMPP for Windows. And after trying these out you can simply delete the directory and everything is clean. A number of portable Windows AMP package choices are summarized at List of portable Web Servers.

Also, a package installer called WAMP is available. It simply installs Apache, PHP and MySQL on windows with ease. http://www.en.wampserver.com/

Mac OS X :

Mac OS X comes with Apache server as standard, and enabling it is as simple as checking the box next to 'Personal Web Sharing' in the 'Sharing' section of System Preferences. Once you have done this you can place files in /Library/WebServer/Documents to access them on your server. Mac OS X does come with PHP but the installation lacks any significant quantity of extensions, so if you want any you're going to have to install PHP yourself.

You can do this by following the instructions in Apple's Developer Connection, or you can download an automatic installer such as the ones available at Entropy. Once you've done one of those, you'll have a server with PHP running on your Mac.

To install MySQL just download and run the OS X installer package or use XAMPP for MacOS X.

If you use unix or learning it, however, compiling might be the way to go for all three, or just the ones you like. The advantage is that you can choose exactly which extensions you want for PHP and Apache. Also you can choose which versions to compile together.

To do this make sure you have the Developer Tools installed. They are shipped with OS X.

How Do I Know My Setup is Working?

After you have successfully completed the previous section, it's time to make sure that everything went well. You also get the chance to write your very first PHP scripts! Open your favourite plain text editor (not Microsoft Word or another word processor), and type the following magical line:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save it as phpinfo.php in your web server's root document directory. If you are using a web hosting server, upload it to the server to where you would place HTML files.

Now, open up your web browser, and go to http://localhost/phpinfo.php, or http://your-web-hostingserver.com/phpinfo.php.

if you are using a web hosting server, and look at the output. Now scroll down that page and make sure there is a table with the title “mysql”, and the top row should read: “MySQL support: enabled”. If your output does not have this, your particular installation of PHP does not have MySQL support enabled. Note that this test doesn't tell you whether MySQL server is running. You should fire up your MySQL client and check before you proceed.

Some dedicated php or script editors even have color coding of different words which can be very useful for finding mistakes.

A free implementation of this is the powerful Notepad++, available from Sourceforge and licensed under the GPL.