QuickPHP Web Server

Recently, I was trying to very quickly hack up a website (this website actually) using PHP but was reluctant to install IIS or Apache. All I wanted to do was to quickly test and debug any scripting errors. Since I'm not hosting this site locally, I don't want to turn my PC into a web server.

Microsoft Visual Studio comes with a development web server for ASP.NET. While it is quite buggy, it's just the right tool for developing web pages. Looking around, I found a few miserable attempt at some thing similar, but most of them do not even parse the URI for GET params, let alone handling POST requests.

I quickly determined the following requirements: · Can be tested with any browsers (therefore, must be a web server) · Must not use .NET framework - PHP developers don't necessary care about .NET · Small size and no installation - so I could grab it here and use it on any computer (hence, no .NET again) · Must be able to handle GET, POST and HEAD requests · Must not rely on PHP to be installed · Supports PHP extensions and PHP.ini (most scripts require them)

This is the result. Weighing in at just over 500KB in size and using around 9MB of memory with PHP DLL running, QuickPHP is one of the most lightweight fully functional standalone PHP web server in the world today!