PHP On macOS

What a Pretty Hypertext Preprocessor!

Overview

PHP Version and Location
Activate PHP for Apache
Activate php.ini
Enable Apache
Specify Mac User Name in Apache
Establish Sites folder PHP website default file
Launch Apache
Libmcrypt PHP
More on OSX

A Pretty Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is included by Apple on MacOS.

PHP Version and Location

The version of PHP is obtained from this Terminal command:

php -v

On Mojave, the response was:

PHP 7.1.23 (cli) (built: Feb 22 2019 22:19:32) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

On Sierra, the response was:

PHP 5.6.28 (cli) (built: Dec  6 2016 12:38:54) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies

On Yosemite, the response was:

PHP 5.5.14 (cli) (built: Sep  9 2014 19:09:25)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies

For the location of the PHP being used by the command line:

which php

On my Yosemite, the response is:

/usr/bin/php

Activate PHP for Apache

To activate PHP using the Pico text editor that comes with Macs:

sudo pico /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Within pico, press Ctrl+W and type php to search for the php5_module statement.

Press cursor key left to the right of the # comment character, press the backspace key to delete it. PHP is activated after you press Ctrl+X and Ctrl+Y to confirm Yes.

Alternately, to activate PHP using the vi text editor that also comes with Macs:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

To find php…

Press ‘x’ over the ‘#’ character to delete it.

Type ‘:w!’ to save. Type ‘ZZ’ (upper case) to quit.

Only for Yosemite, also uncomment line 166:

LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so

And also line 493:

#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

Activate php.ini

To activate PHP using the pico text editor that comes with Macs:

cd /private/etc

Copy the default file to a .ini file:

sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini

Enable Apache

For Yosemite only, open the file with:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

Uncomment line 16:

#Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

Save and exit.

Specify Mac User Name in Apache

Ensure that your user name is listed within:

ls -la /etc/apache2/users

In addition to the Guest.conf listed, there should be a .conf file with your Mac user name (mine is wilsonmar).

Such file may not be created while upgrading to Mountain Lion. Contents of this file is different on Yosemite:

<Directory "/Users/wilsonmar/Sites/">
AddLanguage en .en
LanguagePriority en fr de
ForceLanguagePriority Fallback
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from localhost
Require all granted
</Directory>

Establish Sites folder PHP website default file

By popular convention, the Sites folder (with a capital S) is used to store website files. Create one under the default /Applications folder from the command line:

mkdir ~/Sites

Create a HTML file to display by default when no file is specified:

echo “&LT;html>&LT;body>&LT;h1>My site works&LT;/h1>&LT;/body>&LT;/html>” > ~/Sites/index.html.en

/Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en . This contains the text “It works!”

Launch Apache

Older versions of Apache had a UI in System Preferences > Sharing and enable Web Sharing. But on Yosemite:

Within a Terminal:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist

Check the version of Apache installed:

httpd -v

The response on my Yosemite is:

Server version: Apache/2.4.9 (Unix)

Server built: Sep 9 2014 14:48:20</tt>

See http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/get-apache-mysql-php-phpmyadmin-working-osx-10-10-yosemite/

Libmcrypt PHP

http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/install-mcrypt-php-mac-osx-10-10-yosemite-development-server/

To add modules to PHP, add libmcrypt-2.5.8 and PHP source code from http://us.php.net/get/php-5.5.14.tar.gz/from/a/mirror using these instructions: http://michaelgracie.com/2011/07/21/plugging-mcrypt-into-php-on-mac-os-x-lion-10-7/

More on OSX

This is one of a series on Mac OSX:

Wilson Mar