TalkPHP - How do I get PHP to work on my PC?

Quote:

Originally Posted by caraj (Post 37346)

It's a Dell Latitude D600, and its OS is Windows XP Pro. Here are my specific questions:
1)I've been going to php.net to start the installation. That's right, isn't it?
2)I downloaded what now reads as "php-5.4.9.tar.bz2" but I apparently have no program to run it with. What do I do about that?

No, PHP does not work by itself, it has to have a web server (Apache) with it. The default web server Apache was/is designed for Linux, thus the .tar.bz2 compressed file extension and thus the default web server install is LAMP Stack (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). WAMP is the windows version. You need to go to:

http://www.wampserver.com/en/

download the winXP/win32 version of wampserver and install. The PHP installs with it so will be working once the install completes.

You will additionally need to learn how to define aliases in Apache, but there are many HOWTOs and forums where you can read about this. You need this so that in the browser you can see your projects via:

localhost/myproject1
localhost/myproject2

Wampserver lets you directly open your config files right from it's menu, which is great for beginners.

Also look up and determine which PHP framework you want to select to work with. Frameworks have pre-defined OOP objects that let you develop projects faster. There are over 80 PHP frameworks, but because they work with and support Enterprise Modules I keep the short list of:

cakePHP,
codeIgnitor,
dooPHP (fastest framework),
PHPdevshell (has rudimentary RAD UI),
Yii.

PEAR has a library of expanded capabilities for PHP, but you must be careful in using PEAR as some libs in PEAR conflict with other libs you might have.

Example:
When working with Excel, there is a non-PEAR and a PEAR PHP-Excel, the PEAR version is buggy, not as robust and conflicts with both the non PEAR version and other Apache/PHP extensions. Use the NON PEAR version. These additional libs are either called in the Apache httpd.conf or the php.ini files. You will need to learn about these what they are and do, before making changes.

Anyway that is a short primer on installing PHP. There are lots of HOWTOs on this, mostly for Linux, but a little reading and you will start to catch on. Many PHP forums exist and if you need immediate help, goto irc.freenode.net via a chat client and join channel ##php to post questions there.

Cheers!

OMR