Question

I am developing a webserver that invokes the PHP binary (via CGI) to process a script.

Here’s the problem:

The PHP script isn’t picking up the command line parameters. For example, if the client requests path/to/file.php?test=value, the $_GET array is empty.

I have tried passing the parameters in an environment variable (QUERY_STRING), but they still don’t show up.

How can I pass query string parameters to a PHP application?

Answer 1

There are various SAPIs for PHP. One of them is cli SAPI which apparently is what you’re using, cli SAPI wouldn’t populate $_GET, $_POST … because it’s for command line scripting.

In your case you need PHP cgi SAPI. (e.g., You need to replace php with php-cgi[1] in your shebang)

[1] In most distribuitons it’s called php-cgi, if you compile PHP yourself you need to enable cgi.