How can I use PEAR from its shared directory in apache2?

3rods · 03-08-2011, 11:08 AM

I'm running the turnkey linux version of joomla and I need to use PHP's mail functionality to send a notification email from a page (separate from joomla content) . PHP's native stuff is rather plain and I find myself needing the functionality of PEAR. So I've installed PEAR via aptitude, but it has installed to /usr/share/php.

So, my question is, how do I include these files from php scripts? Firstly, the files are owned by root, the www-data user doesn't have access. It also appears that the permissions on the files may need to be modified. Some php files don't have the execute flag (shouldn't they)?

I recognize the point of having a centralized location for updates and sharing, so I don't want to just copy the files to my web directory (/var/www).

Symbolic link maybe?

Thanks!

Guttorm · 03-09-2011, 09:57 AM

Hi

No, there is no need to symlink. Pear is a "packaging system" on it's own, so you need to "pear install" stuff after you have installed the pear package with aptitude.

Code:

sudo pear install mail

This downloads the mail stuff in /usr/share/php. And PHP has its own include_path which is similar to $PATH in the shell. It looks in many directories when you include/require files. By default, the include_path is ".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear", so this should work:

PHP Code:


			
require "Mail.php";

3rods · 03-10-2011, 10:52 PM

I was unaware of the path include directive in the php.ini file. That's what I was missing. Thanks.