Installing PHP with OCI8

Installation

Configuring PHP with OCI8

Review the previous Requirements section before configuring OCI8.

To enable the OCI8 extension, configure PHP with the option --with-oci8 .

Before starting the web server, OCI8 typically requires several Oracle environment variables (see below) to locate libraries, point to configuration files, and set some basic properties such as the character set used by Oracle libraries. The variables should be set before any PHP process starts.

PHP should be run with the same, or more recent, major version of Oracle libraries as it was configured with. For example, if you build OCI8 with Oracle 11.2 libraries, then PHP should also be deployed and run with Oracle 11.2 libraries.

Installing OCI8 as a Shared Extension

The configuration shared option builds OCI8 as a shared library that can be dynamically loaded into PHP. Building a shared extension allows OCI8 to be upgraded easily without impacting the rest of PHP.

Configure OCI8 using one of the following configure options.

• If using Oracle Instant Client, then do:

  ./configure --with-oci8=shared,instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib
  

  If Instant Client is installed from ZIP files, make sure to create the library symbolic link, for example ln -s libclntsh.so.11.1 libclntsh.so.

  If using an RPM-based installation of Oracle Instant Client, the configure line will look like this:

  ./configure --with-oci8=shared,instantclient,/usr/lib/oracle//client/lib
  

  For example, --with-oci8=shared,instantclient,/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib .

  Note that Oracle Instant Client support first appeared in PHP 4.3.11 and 5.0.4 and originally used the option --with-oci8-instant-client to configure PHP.

• If using an Oracle database or full Oracle Client installation then do:

  ./configure --with-oci8=shared,$ORACLE_HOME
  

  Make sure the web server user (nobody, www) has access to the libraries, initialization files and tnsnames.ora (if used) under the $ORACLE_HOME directory. With Oracle 10gR2, you may need to run the $ORACLE_HOME/install/changePerm.sh utility to give directory access.

After configuration, follow the usual PHP building procedure, e.g. make install. The OCI8 shared extension oci8.so library will be created. It may need to be manually moved to the PHP extension directory, specified by the extension_dir option in your php.ini file.

To complete installation of OCI8, edit php.ini and add the line:

extension=oci8.so

Installing OCI8 as a Statically Compiled Extension

Configure OCI8 using one of the following configure options.

• If using Oracle Instant Client, then do:

  ./configure --with-oci8=instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib
  

• If using an Oracle database or full Oracle Client installation then do:

  ./configure --with-oci8=$ORACLE_HOME
  

After configuration, follow the usual PHP building procedure, e.g. make install. After successful compilation, you do not need to add oci8.so to php.ini. No additional build steps are required.

Installing OCI8 from PECL

The OCI8 extension can be added to an existing PHP installation either automatically or manually from » http://pecl.php.net/. Information for installing this PECL extension may be found in the manual chapter titled Installation of PECL extensions. Additional information such as new releases, downloads, source files, maintainer information, and a CHANGELOG, can be located here: » http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8.

For an automated install follow these steps:

• If you are behind a firewall, set PEAR's proxy, for example:

  pear config-set http_proxy http://my-proxy.example.com:80/
  

• Run

  pecl install oci8
  

  When prompted, enter either the value of $ORACLE_HOME, or instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib.

  Note: Do not enter the variable $ORACLE_HOME because it will not be expanded. Instead, enter the actual path of the Oracle home directory.

For a manual install, download the PECL OCI8 package, e.g. oci8-1.3.5.tgz.

• Extract the package:

  tar -zxf oci8-1.3.5.tgz
  cd oci8-1.3.5
  

• Prepare the package:

  phpize
  

• Configure the package, either using $ORACLE_HOME or Instant Client

  ./configure -with-oci8=shared,$ORACLE_HOME
  

  or

  ./configure -with-oci8=shared,instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib
  

• Install the package:

  make install
  

After either an automatic or manual install, edit your php.ini file and add the line:

extension=oci8.so

Make sure the php.ini directive extension_dir is set to the directory that oci8.so was installed in.