Appendix C - Extension Configuration Information

Appendix C - Zend Core Extensions

The following PHP Extensions are included in the Core version 2.5 installation package:

Legend:

- Extension installed but disabled by default.

+ Extension installed and enabled by default.

0 Extension is not installed.

Extension Name

Description

Windows

Unix/Linux

/Mac

bcmath

Arbitrary Precision Mathematics - PHP offers the Binary Calculator which supports numbers of any size and precision, represented as strings.

bz2

Bzip2 Compression - The bzip2 functions are used to transparently read and write bzip2 (.bz2) compressed files.

calendar

Calendar Conversions - The calendar extension presents a series of functions to simplify converting between different calendar formats. The intermediary or standard it is based on is the Julian Day Count.

com_dotnet

Component Object Model - An object orientated layer (and associated services) on top of DCE RPC (an open standard) which defines a common calling convention that enables code written in any language to call and interoperate with code written in any other language.

ctype

Character Classifications - Checks whether a character or string falls into a certain character class according to the current locale.

curl

Client URL Library Functions - Allows you to connect to and communicate with many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.

Note:
libcurl libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

date

Date Module - Allows you to get the date from the server where your PHP scripts are running. You can use this function to format the date in many different ways.

dom

DOM XML- The DOM extension is the replacement for the DOM XML extension from PHP 4. The extension still contains many old functions, but they should no longer be used. In particular, functions that are not object-oriented should be avoided.

The extension allows you to operate on an XML document with the DOM API.

exif

(Exchangeable Image File Format) Data - With the exif extension you are able to work with image meta data.

filter

Serves to validate and filter data coming from some insecure source, such as user inputs.

ftp

FTP Client - The functions in this extension implement client access to file servers speaking the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). This extension is meant for detailed access to an FTP server providing a wide range of control to the executing script.

GD (Image Manipulation) - With the GD library of image functions PHP can be used to create and manipulate image files in a variety of different image formats, including gif, png, jpg, wbmp, and xpm. Even more conveniently, PHP can output image streams directly to a browser.

gettext

The gettext functions implement an NLS (Native Language Support) API which can be used to internationalize your PHP applications.

gmp

GNU MP Library (Arbitrary Length Integers) - These functions allow you to work with arbitrary-length integers using the GNU MP library.
Note:

GMP libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

hash

Allows direct or incremental processing of arbitrary length messages using a variety of hashing algorithms.

ibm_db2

IBM DB2 Database Access - These functions enable you to access the IBM DB2 Universal Database, IBM Cloudscape, and Apache Derby databases using the DB2 Call Level Interface (DB2 CLI).

-
(Not available for Mac)

iconv

Character Set Conversion - This module contains an interface to iconv character set conversion facility. With this module, you can turn a string represented by a local character set into the one represented by another character set, which may be the Unicode character set.

imap

IMAP, POP3 and NNTP - The underlying c-client library also supports NNTP, POP3 and local mailbox access methods.

JSON

Implements the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data-interchange format.

ldap

OpenLDAP - LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and is a protocol used to access "Directory Servers". The Directory is a special kind of database that holds information in a tree structure.
Note:

LDAP libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

mbstring

Multibyte Character Processing - Multibyte character encoding schemes were developed to express more than 256 characters in the regular bytewise coding system.

When you manipulate (trim, split, splice, etc.) strings encoded in a multibyte encoding, you need to use special functions since two or more consecutive bytes may represent a single character in such encoding schemes.

mcrypt

MCrypt - An interface to the mcrypt library.
Note:

Libmcrypt libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

mhash

Hash Algorithms - Mhash can be used to create checksums, message digests, message authentication codes, and more.

Note:

Libmhash libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

ming

Ming Functions for Flash - An open-source (LGPL) library which allows you to create SWF ("Flash") format movies.

Warning: This extension is experimental. The behaviour of this extension may change without notice in a future release of PHP. Use this extension at your own risk.

Note:

Ming libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

mssql

MS SQL (FreeTDS) - Allows you to access MS SQL Server database.

Note:

FreeTDS libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

mysql

MySQL - Allows you to access MySQL database servers.

Note:

MySQL libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

mysqli

MySQL Improved - Allows you to access the functionality provided by MySQL 4.1 and above.

Note:

MySQL libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

oci8 - Oracle

Oracle Call Interface - Supports binding of PHP variables to Oracle placeholders, has full LOB, FILE and ROWID support, and allows you to use user-supplied define variables. Allows access to Oracle7, 8 and 9 databases.

Note: This can only be enabled if the Oracle Instant Client is installed.

See http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.oci-connect.php for rmation on using the oci_connect function to connect to your Oracle database.

See http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/
pdf/underground-php-oracle-manual.pdf for more on the OIC Libraries and Oracle Extensions.

-
(Not available for Mac).

odbc

DB2 Unified ODBC - In addition to normal ODBC support, the Unified ODBC functions in PHP allow you to access several databases that have borrowed the semantics of the ODBC API to implement their own API.

openssl

OpenSSL - This module uses the functions of >>OpenSSL for generation and verification of signatures and for sealing (encrypting) and opening (decrypting) data.

Note:

OpenSSL libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function.

See Appendix F - Loading the mod_ssl Module for more on enabling SSL Support on Apache.

pcntl

Process Control Functions - Process Control support in PHP implements the Unix style of process creation, program execution, signal handling and process termination. Process Control should not be enabled within a Webserver environment and unexpected results may happen if any Process Control functions are used within a webserver environment.

pcre

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions - The syntax for patterns used in these functions closely resembles Perl.

posix

POSIX - Contains an interface to those functions defined in the IEEE 1003.1 (POSIX.1) standards document which are not accessible through other means.

Warning: Sensitive data can be retrieved with the POSIX functions, e.g. posix_getpwnam() and friends. None of the POSIX functions perform any kind of access checking when safe mode is enabled. It's therefore strongly advised to disable the POSIX extension.

pdo

Base PDO (PHP Data Objects) Driver - The PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension defines a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP. Each database driver that implements the PDO interface can expose database-specific features as regular extension functions.

pdo_ibm

PDO_IBM is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to IBM databases.

-
(Not available for Mac)

pdo_informix

The Informix driver for Informix (IDS) 7.x, SE 7.x, Universal Server (IUS) 9.x and IDS 2000 is implemented in "ifx.ec" and "php3_ifx.h" in the informix extension directory.

Note:

Informix (CSDK) libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

pdo_mysql

Allows access to MySQL 3.x/4.0 databases

pdo_oci

A driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to Oracle databases through the OCI library.

pdo_pgsql

Allows access to PostgreSQL databases

reflection

PHP Reflection Support - PHP 5 comes with a complete reflection API that adds the ability to reverse-engineer classes, interfaces, functions and methods as well as extensions. The reflection API also offers ways of retrieving doc comments for functions, classes and methods.

session

Session Management - Session support in PHP consists of a way to preserve certain data across subsequent accesses.

shmop

Shared Memory - Shmop is an easy-to-use set of functions that allows PHP to read, write, create and delete Unix shared memory segments.

simplexml

SimpleXML - The SimpleXML extension provides a very simple and easily usable toolset to convert XML to an object that can be processed with normal property selectors and array iterators.

Note:

libxml libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

soap

SOAP - The SOAP extension can be used to write SOAP Servers and Clients.

Note:

libxml libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

sockets

Socket Communications - The socket extension implements a low-level interface to the socket communication functions based on the popular BSD sockets, providing the possibility to act as a socket server as well as a client.

spl

Standard PHP Library - SPL is a collection of interfaces and classes that are meant to solve standard problems.

sqlite

SQLite - This is an extension for the SQLite Embeddable SQL Database Engine. SQLite is a C library that implements an embeddable SQL database engine. Programs that link with the SQLite library can have SQL database access without running a separate RDBMS process.

sysvmsg

Enables System V messages support - The messaging functions may be used to send and receive messages to/from other processes. They provide a simple and effective means of exchanging data between processes, without the need for setting up an alternative using Unix domain sockets.

sysvsem

Enables System V semaphore support - Semaphores may be used to provide exclusive access to resources on the current machine, or to limit the number of processes that may simultaneously use a resource.

sysvshm

Enables System V shared memory support - Shared memory may be used to provide access to global variables.

standard

Standard PHP functions

tidy

Tidy HTML Clean and Repair - Tidy is a binding for the Tidy HTML clean and repair utility which allows you to not only clean and otherwise manipulate HTML documents, but also traverse the document tree.

Note:

libtidy libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

tokenizer

Interface to Zend Engine's PHP Scanner - 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.

wddx

WDDX (Web Distributed Data Exchange) - These functions are intended for work with >>WDDX

Note:

expat (Apache) libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

xml

SAX XML - XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a data format for structured document interchange on the Web. This toolkit lets you parse, but not validate, XML documents. This extension lets you create XML parsers and then define handlers for different XML events.

xmlreader

XML Reader - The XMLReader extension is an XML Pull parser. The reader acts as a cursor going forward on the document stream and stopping at each node on the way.

Note:

libxml libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

xmlrpc

XML-RPC - These functions can be used to write XML-RPC servers and clients.

Warning: This extension is experimental. The behaviour of this extension may change without notice in a future release of PHP. Use this extension at your own risk.

xmlwriter

XML Writer - Represents a writer that provides a non-cached, forward-only means of generating streams or files containing XML data. This extension can be used in an object oriented style or a procedural one. Every method documented describes the alternative procedural call.

xsl

XSL Transformations - The XSL extension implements the XSL standard, performing XSLT transformations using the libxslt library.

Note:

libxslt libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

zip

ZIP Archives - Enables you to transparently read ZIP compressed archives and the files inside them.

Note:

Zlib libraries must be installed in order for this extension to function

zlib

zlib Compression (incl. gzip) - Enables you to transparently read and write gzip (.gz) compressed files, through versions of most of the filesystem functions which work with gzip-compressed files (and uncompressed files without sockets.)

To uninstall extensions:

Open the Zend Updater.

By default, this is located in:
Linux/Unix/Mac: /usr/local/Zend/Core/setup/ZendUpdater
Windows: Start | All Programs | Zend Core v2.5 | Zend Updater.
Select Update Zend Core.
Select Erase Components.
A list of erasable components will be displayed.
Extensions will be prefixed with a "/ext".
Select which extensions to delete.
Click OK.
Click Exit until you have exited the Zend Updater.
Restart the web server in order for your changes to take effect.

To restart your web server:
Under Windows:
Open your Apache Monitor (by default located in C:\Program Files\Zend\Apache2\bin\ApacheMonitor.exe if you installed Zend Core's bundled Apache) and select Restart.
Under Windows Vista, you must restart the server from your Services Manager.
Under Linux/Unix:
Click the Restart Server button, found in the top-right of the Zend Core Administration GUI.

Note:

Some extensions have dependencies on certain libraries.
For a full list of libraries installed with Zend Core, see Appendix D - Libraries.