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14.8. Deploying PHP Applications

The PHP server extension allows Virtuoso to execute PHP (v4) pages stored in the file system or in Virtuoso's WebDAV repository. PHP pages run inside the Virtuoso process.

Figure 14.53. The HTTP PHP handler

The HTTP PHP handler

The VSE __http_handler_php() has been implemented so that the file extension '.php' is recognized by Virtuoso to switch between 'normal' mode and extension processing for PHP mode in the HTTP/WebDAV services.

PHP (recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is suited for Web-based development. Here is an example of a simple PHP page:

Example 14.64. PHP introductory example 

<html>
    <head>
        <title>Example</title>
    </head>
    <body>

        <?php
        echo "Hi, I'm a PHP script!";
        ?>

    </body>
</html>

Notice how this is similar to VSP script, and different from a script written in other languages like Perl or C -- instead of writing a program with lots of commands to output HTML, you write an HTML script with some embedded code to do something. The PHP code is enclosed in special start and end tags that allow you to jump into and out of "PHP mode".

[Tip] See Also:

PHP Online Documentation

In-Process Data Access Client

14.8.1. Building the Virtuoso Server With PHP Extension

  1. Firstly you need to have the PHP4 library installed with Zend and ODBC interface enabled. On UNIX-es this can be enabled by doing 'configure --enable-experimental-zts --with-iodbc'. On Windows the library must be downloaded from the php.net site.

  2. Make sure that the iODBC library is installed if you are preparing to build on UNIX platform.

  3. Make the bif_server_php executable in the bifsdk/examples/ directory. This same directory contains the source file for the bif_server_php executable: bif_server_php.cpp.

The Virtuoso distribution may already contain a binary executable of the PHP extension of the Virtuoso's Web Service. In which case you may skip the build process and start the server with the PHP extensions instead of starting the normal virtuoso server executable.

To start and test the Virtuoso server with the PHP extension do the following:

  1. Make a simple file 'info.php' and place it in the HTTP root directory. The content of the info.php file should be the single line: 

    <?phpinfo();?>

    This function produces an HTML page containing various PHP processor information.

  2. Start the server. For Linux platform: bif_server_php -f, for Windows platform: bif_server_php-odbc-t.exe -f

  3. Test the installation by entering the http://[host:port]/info.php as the URL of a browser of your choosing.

[Note] Note:

Windows users will need to install the php4ts.dll (from the php.net site) before running the PHP enabled Virtuoso server. This DLL must be in the system path when Virtuoso starts and can typically be placed in the %SYSTEMROOT% directory without any path modifications.
[Note] Note:

The PHP library used with Virtuoso must be version 4.3.1 or greater. From this version the PHP library includes a serious PHP CGI vulnerability fix, without which the Virtuoso server will fail to start for security reasons.
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