CISE Help & Resources
Running PHP Programs
This page is intended to provide you with Department-specific information about running PHP programs on our server. We assume you have read Creating a Personal Web Page and have basic, general knowledge of writing PHP programs.
For more information on PHP, visit php.net.
Example: Hello World
Suppose you have the following program located in $HOME/public_html/hello.php
#!/usr/local/bin/php <html><head><title>PHP Test</title></head> <body> <?php print( "Hello World<br />"); ?> </body></html>
and you wish to execute it. First you need to tell the webserver that files with an extension of .php are programs, and should be executed by the program specified in the shebang line. Create (or edit) a file called htaccess in the same directory as your script (or above it), and add the following lines:
AddHandler cgi-script .php DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
Both the program and the htaccess file should have the proper permissions, world executable for the former, world readable for latter. Neither should be world writable.
This can be done by running the commands:
chmod 711 hello.php chmod 644 htaccess
You should now be able to run the PHP program with this url:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~username/hello.php
And it should display "hello world" if everything went okay.
Debugging
One of the most helpful tools for debugging PHP scripts is the
interpreter's native error reporting functionality. This option is
disabled by default to prevent security risks, but it can be enabled on a
per-directory basis by placing a customized php.ini file
in that directory. Every time a PHP script is run, it checks for this
file in the local directory and sets a number of configuration variables
from its contents. By setting the display_errors variable to
On, you are configuring PHP to echo errors to the browser.
To enable error reporting for your application, follow these steps:
-
Download php.ini into the directory containing PHP scripts.
In
php.ini, add the following lines:cgi.force_redirect = 0 display_errors = On
-
Debug your program. Navigate your browser to the page you wish to debug
on the testing server, www-pub.
http://www-pub.cise.ufl.edu/~username/foo.php
Any errors should now be displayed in the browser. -
After debugging, set
display_errors = Off.
Note: www-pub is only accessible from within the CISE network.
For more information on using the php.ini file, see the
file's verbose commenting or view the official online documentation.
Tips and Caveats
-
The shebang line (
#!/usr/local/bin/php) should be the first line of your file and there should be no whitespace preceding the hash or bang. -
Do NOT make the
htaccessfile, any php file, or yourpublic_htmldirectory world writeable. The webserver will (correctly) interpret this as a fatal error. -
The
DirectoryIndexdirective is not necessary, but useful. This will tell the webserver to look forindex.htmland thenindex.phpas the default html files. -
Make sure the text file format for your script is
Unix, not DOS. See the
dos2unixandunix2doscommands for more information. - PHP scripts are run in the same way CGI scripts are, and therefore, much of the information about debugging CGI scripts applies to PHP programs as well. Make sure you are familiar with the section on debugging CGI programs.
