Who Knows AppWeb HTTP Server And Its Embedded PHP?

Question

Hi all,

on my search for a fast but comfortable web server I dropped into the homepage of EmbedThis(TM) AppWeb(TM) HTTP server. This one has 2 licencse models, GPLv2 and a commercial one with support.

On the first view it looks good: the footprint is not too big, it is fast and it has a lot of configuration otions. The most important thing would be a fast PHP execution using a built-in PHP library. Unfortunately this PHP library doesn't include every option, especially "gettext" which one I need for I18N.

My target platform is Linux on an embedded device with an ARM based CPU. Does anybody have experiences with the issues mentioned above?

Kind regards, Andi

Answer 1

I check the source code and PHP is not included in it (only a handler for the web server itself). I suppose you downloaded the binaries and the bundled version of PHP did not include gettext.

You have to compile PHP yourself and when you do that you can include the extensions you want.

Answer 2

Doesn't lighttpd run on embedded platforms? It supports PHP through FastCGI. If it doesn't then thttpd might be a viable solution (runs PHP through CGI).

Alternatively you could just have a look at the servers mentioned in the Lightweight Web servers article and see if one fits your needs better then those.

Answer 3

Their FAQ entry extensively covers replacing the built in library with another flavor of PHP, as well as enabling more features in the built in PHP handler. This isn't obvious in the default (html) docs that come in the docroot (localhost:7777 after installing).

Just check out the mentioned git repo, edit the Makefile (basically, wrapper to Zend's) and include mbstring, or whatever else you need. The default build is extremely bare bones.

This will make a new libphp.so for Appweb to use.

Good to see another fan of Appweb, its a very useful tool.