Extensions (DLLs) are used on Windows systems to add functionality to
PHP. The official distribution does not provide every possible extension,
just some popular (and tested) ones that the developers feel are suitable
for prime time. The following function sets, however, are pre-compiled into
the official distribution of PHP4, and therefore do NOT require additional
extensions:
- Regular expression support
- Dynamic library support
- Internal Sendmail support
- Perl-compatible regular expression support
- ODBC support
- Session support
- XML support
- MySQL support
To use Windows extensions, simply place the files in your PHP directory
and then modify the extension_dir entry in the php.ini file, to point to
that directory. Next, you have to activate the extensions. To do so, open
php.ini in your text editor and follow these steps:
- Look for a section that starts like this:
;Windows Extensions
- For each extension you want to use, take away the semicolon before the
name if the file is in the list.
- If the file is not in the list, add it:
extension=[your_extension_name].dll
- After changing anything in the php.ini file, check the output of
phpinfo() to verify your changes.
TIP: Do not be confused by the following line in the Extensions
section:
;extension=php_mysql.dll
If you want to use MySQL with PHP on Windows, you do not need a file
called php_mysql.dll and do not need to uncomment that line. MySQL support
is built into the official distribution of PHP4 and no additional files or
changes to php.ini are necessary to enable support.
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