Using PHP With Tomcat

This page describes how to use PHP (v4) with Tomcat (v4 or later). The contents were originally written and sent to the tomcat-dev list by Jean-Frederic Clere (on his vacation, no less ) and Henri Gomez.

Prerequisites

• Download PHP (this tutorial was done with PHP 4.3.5)
• Download Tomcat (this tutorial was done with Tomcat 5.0.19)
• Define $JAVA_HOME for your JDK installation
• Define $TOMCAT_HOME for your tomcat installation
• Define $PHP_HOME for your PHP installation
  

Configure and make PHP Installation:

• ./configure --with-servlet=$TOMCAT_HOME --with-java=$JAVA_HOME
• make
• A jarfile and dynamic library are produced: sapi/servlet/phpsrvlt.jar and libs/libphp4.so.
  

Copy jar to your webapp's or tomcat's common class repository:

• cp $PHP_HOME/sapi/servlet/phpsrvlt.jar $TOMCAT_HOME/common/lib
  

Declare PHP servlet and servlet-mapping in your or tomcat's common web.xml:

• Copy from $PHP_HOME/sapi/servlet/web.xml servlet and servlet-mapping and paste into $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/web.xml.
  

Modify your LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the dynamic library produced in step 1 above:

• LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PHP_HOME/libs
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  

Start tomcat:

• $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh.
  

Testing

• Create a file named test.php in the docBase directory of your webapp.
• In that file, simply put:
  +++
  <?php phpinfo(); ?>
  +++
  
• Point your browser at the file by navigating to
  http://localhost:8080/test.php

Patch for PHP configure Script

This is a patch for PHP's configure script to account for the servlet jar name change (from servlet.jar in Servlet Spec 2.3 and previous \[tomcat 4 and previous\] to servlet-api.jar in Servlet Spec 2.4 and above \[tomcat 5 and later\]):

— configure.org 2004-04-07 11:20:24.000000000 +0200
+++ configure 2004-04-07 11:22:50.000000000 +0200
if test "$withval" = "yes"; then
SERVLET_CLASSPATH=.
else
+ if test -f $withval/common/lib/servlet-api.jar; then
+ SERVLET_CLASSPATH=$withval/common/lib/servlet-api.jar
+ fi
+
if test -f $withval/lib/servlet.jar; then
SERVLET_CLASSPATH=$withval/lib/servlet.jar
fi
++++