How to start php server

Warning

This web server is designed to aid application development. It may also be useful for testing purposes or for application demonstrations that are run in controlled environments. It is not intended to be a full-featured web server. It should not be used on a public network.

The CLI SAPI provides a built-in web server.

The web server runs only one single-threaded process, so PHP applications will stall if a request is blocked.

URI requests are served from the current working directory where PHP was started, unless the -t option is used to specify an explicit document root. If a URI request does not specify a file, then either index.php or index.html in the given directory are returned. If neither file exists, the lookup for index.php and index.html will be continued in the parent directory and so on until one is found or the document root has been reached. If an index.php or index.html is found, it is returned and $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] is set to the trailing part of the URI. Otherwise a 404 response code is returned.

If a PHP file is given on the command line when the web server is started it is treated as a "router" script. The script is run at the start of each HTTP request. If this script returns false, then the requested resource is returned as-is. Otherwise the script's output is returned to the browser.

Standard MIME types are returned for files with extensions: .3gp, .apk, .avi, .bmp, .css, .csv, .doc, .docx, .flac, .gif, .gz, .gzip, .htm, .html, .ics, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .js, .kml, .kmz, .m4a, .mov, .mp3, .mp4, .mpeg, .mpg, .odp, .ods, .odt, .oga, .ogg, .ogv, .pdf, .pdf, .png, .pps, .pptx, .qt, .svg, .swf, .tar, .text, .tif, .txt, .wav, .webm, .wmv, .xls, .xlsx, .xml, .xsl, .xsd, and .zip.

Example #1 Starting the web server

$ cd ~/public_html
$ php -S localhost:8000

The terminal will show:

PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Thu Jul 21 10:43:28 2011
Listening on localhost:8000
Document root is /home/me/public_html
Press Ctrl-C to quit

After URI requests for //localhost:8000/ and //localhost:8000/myscript.html the terminal will show something similar to:

PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Thu Jul 21 10:43:28 2011
Listening on localhost:8000
Document root is /home/me/public_html
Press Ctrl-C to quit.
[Thu Jul 21 10:48:48 2011] ::1:39144 GET /favicon.ico - Request read
[Thu Jul 21 10:48:50 2011] ::1:39146 GET / - Request read
[Thu Jul 21 10:48:50 2011] ::1:39147 GET /favicon.ico - Request read
[Thu Jul 21 10:48:52 2011] ::1:39148 GET /myscript.html - Request read
[Thu Jul 21 10:48:52 2011] ::1:39149 GET /favicon.ico - Request read

Note that prior to PHP 7.4.0, symlinked statical resources have not been accessible on Windows, unless the router script would handle these.

Example #2 Starting with a specific document root directory

$ cd ~/public_html
$ php -S localhost:8000 -t foo/

The terminal will show:

PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Thu Jul 21 10:50:26 2011
Listening on localhost:8000
Document root is /home/me/public_html/foo
Press Ctrl-C to quit

Example #3 Using a Router Script

In this example, requests for images will display them, but requests for HTML files will display "Welcome to PHP":

$ php -S localhost:8000 router.php

Example #4 Checking for CLI Web Server Use

To reuse a framework router script during development with the CLI web server and later also with a production web server:

$ php -S localhost:8000 router.php

Example #5 Handling Unsupported File Types

If you need to serve a static resource whose MIME type is not handled by the CLI web server, use:

$ php -S localhost:8000 router.php

Example #6 Accessing the CLI Web Server From Remote Machines

You can make the web server accessible on port 8000 to any interface with:

Warning

The built-in Web Server should not be used on a public network.

jonathan at reinink dot ca ¶

8 years ago

In order to set project specific configuration options, simply add a php.ini file to your project, and then run the built-in server with this flag:

php -S localhost:8000 -c php.ini

This is especially helpful for settings that cannot be set at runtime [ini_set[]].

oan at vizrt dot com ¶

5 years ago

I painfully experienced behaviour that I can't seem to find documented here so I wanted to save everyone from repeating my mistake by giving the following heads up:

When starting php -S on a mac [in my case macOS Sierra] to host a local server, I had trouble with connecting from legacy Java.

As it turned out, if you started the php server with
"php -S localhost:80"
the server will be started with ipv6 support only!

To access it via ipv4, you need to change the start up command like so:
"php -S 127.0.0.1:80"
which starts server in ipv4 mode only.

Mark Simon ¶

6 years ago

It’s not mentioned directly, and may not be obvious, but you can also use this to create a virtual host. This, of course, requires the help of your hosts file.

Here are the steps:

1    /etc/hosts
    127.0.0.1    www.example.com

2    cd [root folder]
    php -S www.example.com:8000

3    Browser:
    //www.example.com:8000/index.php

Combined with a simple SQLite database, you have a very handy testing environment.

deep at deepshah dot me ¶

2 years ago

Listen on all addresses of IPv4:
php -S 0.0.0.0:80

Listen on all addresses of IPv6:
php -S [::0]:80

tamas at bartatamas dot hu ¶

7 years ago

If your URI contains a dot, you'll lose the $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] variable, when using the built-in webserver.
I wanted to write an API, and use .json ending in the URI-s, but then the framework's routing mechanism broke, and it took a lot of time to discover that the reason behind it was its router relying on $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'].

References:
//bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=61286

matthes at leuffen dot de ¶

5 years ago

To output debugging information on the command line you can write output to php://stdout:

Ivan Ferrer ¶

9 years ago

On Windows you may find useful to have a phpserver.bat file in shell:sendto with the folowing:
explorer //localhost:8888
rem check if arg is file or dir
if exist "%~1\" [
  php -S localhost:8888 -t "%~1"
] else [
  php -S localhost:8888 -t "%~dp1"
]

then for fast web testing you only have to SendTo a file or folder to this bat and it will open your explorer and run the server.

sony at sony-ak dot com ¶

2 years ago

To send environment variable as long as with PHP built-in web server, type like this.

~$ MYENV=dev php -d variables_order=EGPCS -S 0.0.0.0:8000

On PHP script we can check with this code.