12 Using PHP with Oracle Application Server

The chapter provides information about PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) for use with Oracle Application Server.

This chapter contains the following sections:

PHP Overview
Using the PHP Extension for Oracle JDeveloper
Connecting to an Oracle Database with PHP
Oracle Application Server mod_php Extensions

12.1 PHP Overview

PHP is a scripting language capable of being embedded in HTML. This capability makes PHP well-suited for Web development. PHP's object model facillitates project development using standard object-oriented methodologies.

PHP is part of the Oracle Application Server installation package located in the following directory:

\OH\10.1.2\OracleAS\portal\Apache\Apache\php

Oracle provides information about PHP at the Open Source Developer Center:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/opensource/index.html

You also can find information about PHP at:

http://www.php.net/

12.2 Using the PHP Extension for Oracle JDeveloper

The following link provides information on installing and configuring the PHP Extension for Oracle JDeveloper:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/partners/addins/exchange/php/index.html

For a tutorial on using JDeveloper with PHP, see "Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One Quick Tour".

12.3 Connecting to an Oracle Database with PHP

The following link provides information on connecting to an Oracle Database with PHP:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/partners/addins/exchange/php/readme_php1.2.html

12.4 Oracle Application Server mod_php Extensions

Oracle Application Server provides a server side module for PHP named mod_php. Configuration options for mod_php include extensions. Oracle Application Server supports the extensions listed in Table 12-1, "Oracle Application Server mod_php Extensions".

Table 12-1 Oracle Application Server mod_php Extensions

mod_php Extension	Installation Support	Description	Runtime Dependencies
BC Math	Default enabled on Windows only	For arbitrary precision mathematics, PHP offers the Binary Calculator which supports numbers of any size and precision, represented as strings.	No external libraries are needed for this extension.
Calendar	Default enabled on Windows only	The calendar extension presents a series of functions to simplify converting between different calendar formats.	No external libraries are needed for this extension.
C Type	Available on Unix and Windows	The functions provided by this extension check whether a character or string falls into a certain character class according to the current locale.	No external libraries are needed for this extension.
COM	Available on Windows only	COM is one of the main ways to glue applications and components together on the Windows platform. Using COM you can launch Microsoft Word, fill in a document template, save the result as a Word document, and send it to a visitor of your web site.	No external libraries are needed for this extension. However, COM objects, like MS Word, must be installed by the user.
FTP	Default enabled on Windows only	This extension provides access to an FTP server and provides a wide range of control to the executing script.	No external libraries are needed for this extension.
OCI8	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	The OCI 8 functions allow you to connect to Oracle 9, Oracle 8 and Oracle 7 databases.	Oracle client libraries are required to use this extension. Oracle client libraries are provided with an Oracle Application Server install. On Windows the dependency is on php_oci8.dll which resides in %ORACLE_HOME% /Apache/Apache/php/extensions This functionality can be enabled or disabled on Windows from the php.ini file.
Object Overload	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	The purpose of this extension is to allow overloading of object property access and method calls. This extension is experimental.	No external libraries are needed for this extension.
ODBC	Default enabled on Windows only	This function is enabled by default on Windows. The Unified ODBC functions allows the user to access most databases like Adabas D, IBM DB2 etc.	During install time, the libraries for the database, which requires support, must be provided. This is not possible to provide hence not supported.
PCRE	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	Perl-compatible regular expressions or PCRE functions are enabled with this directive.	This extension uses the default bundled library and does not require any additional libraries.
POSIX	Default enabled on UNIX only	This module provides access to POSIX functions and is available only for UNIX systems.	No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
SESSION	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	Session support in PHP consists of a way to preserve certain data across subsequent accesses. The session related information is either stored in a cookie or propagated though a URL.	No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
MYSQL	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	This extension is enabled by default in PHP and provides access to MySQL databases.	On Solaris it uses the bundled client libraries and on Windows it requires the php_mysql.dll along with the libmysql.dll.
TOKENIZER	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	The tokenizer functions provide an interface to the PHP tokenizer embedded in the Zend Engine. Using these functions you may write your own PHP source analyzing or modification tools without having to deal with the language specification at the lexical level.	No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
XML	Enabled on UNIX and Windows	This PHP extension implements support for the XML parser Expat. Since PHP is built using Apache, it uses the bundled expat library from Apache.	No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
ZLib	Default enabled on Windows only	This module enables the customer to transparently read compressed files like gzip.	No additional extensions are required to use this functionality.

Note:

For more information on mod_php extensions, see http://us4.php.net/manual/en/funcref.php