php in an .html file does not work

NW Otter · 09-23-2003, 03:17 PM

I am just starting to experiment with Apache, php and mysql. I have written a bit of asp, vbscipt and SQL server, though.

I have a mandrake box with php and mysql installed but I don't know if they are configured correctly, and may not be due to this problem. I have this code...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd" >
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello, world</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h1>
<?php
echo "Hello, world";
?>
</h1>
</body>
</html>

If I put it on the web server as example.php and look in a browser, (IE on a windows box) it works. If I change the filename to example.html, it does NOT work. What gives?

david_ross · 09-23-2003, 03:24 PM

Apache will only parse certain files for php commands - eg .php extenstions by default. You will need to modify the AddType directive to include .html files if you want them to be parsed too.

bulliver · 09-23-2003, 03:29 PM

There is a line in httpd.conf that looks like:

Code:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

This line basically tells apache to run a file with a .php extension through the php interpreter. If you want plain .html files to be interpreted as php you will have to add .html to the end of this line.

This can be useful for hiding the fact that you use php to the casual observer...but also there is a performance penalty, because every plain html page has the added overhead of being sent through the interpreter.

Another thing you can do though...is create your own custom file extensions here. For example, if your entire website is done in php you can name all your files index.joe or index.bob or index.uselinuxordie, well, you get the idea.

NW Otter · 09-23-2003, 03:59 PM

Thanks for the help. I figured it was some sort of configuration problem, but tracking stuff like this down in documentation can be time consuming.

Thanks again!

Vampyric · 09-23-2003, 04:10 PM

you also might want to check that the php module is not commented out in httpd.conf (cause it is by default)

uncomment

LoadModule php4_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so

assuming you installed php4

and start the server