Can PHP be installed on a local machine?

Question

For Web-dev, can the PHP Processor be installed on a regular Windows XP machine, such that viewing PHP files through a browser executes the PHP script? (NOT Windows Server 2003)

I even downloaded PHP but it appears they want it installed on a server.

Any other ways to quickly preview and run PHP on a local machine WITHOUT uploading the file to server? (Dreamweaver can process the static HTML within PHP files..)

Answer 1

I suggest:

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

or

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

These are easy-install packages of apache+php+mysql for windows.

Answer 2

I use the XAMPP LAMP stack. One click install on Windows XP Pro and Home versions.

Answer 3

Sure. Just download the windows binaries from the php download page. http://www.php.net/downloads.php

You will need a webserver (such as apache) instealled if you want to parse webpages. But, with just that download you can run php scripts.

Answer 4

XAMPP is the obvious one, but there is another nice one: The Uniform Server, which is designed to be mobile (i.e. to be used on removable media like CD-ROMs):

http://www.uniformserver.com/

Answer 5

I've been pretty happy thus far with the less-bloated XAMPP Lite. And despite the note at that link it's updated as often as XAMPP is.

Answer 6

try this one:

http://www.appservnetwork.com/

gave me good results.

Answer 7

Microsoft Web Platform Installer looks like a good solution, but you need Vista.

Answer 8

You can, as already mentioned, go about it the easier way by installing something like XAMPP (my personal favorite) or, if you want to mimic something closer to a server environment, install VirtualBox/VirtualPC and create a virtual machine running Debian or whatever server OS you need, with the appropriate PHP, Apache2 (etc...) packages.

I find this to be sometimes preferable to using XAMPP, since XAMPP comes packaged with a specific set of Apache or PHP modules and you may need something not already pre-packaged with XAMPP.

Answer 9

XAMPP will do the work for you, but beware that most php servers runs on some kind of unix so often it is close but not really the same.

I'm thinking on basic differences like paths, path delimiters, symbolic links etc etc

Feel free to do a search on "WAMP vs LAMP" for more info.

/Johan