PhpServlet

Introduction

If you are developing JSPs and servlets you might sometimes find some old php scripts and projects that you probably would like to run on your server. But the servlet engine does not work with php, so you have to download and install Apache, configure php, configure the servlet engine connector or worse use different ports and so on. It would be nice to get php running onTomcat or any other servlet engine, just for development purposes.

As you probably know a servlet comes with php that should solve this problem. But it does not. With the current php version (4.3.2), and maybe other versions too, this servlet does not work. While lots of environment variables - the whole windows environment stuff - are given to php, the HTTP_ variables are completely missing. Even worse, a "404 Not Found" header from php crashes Tomcat (4.1.19). If you want to try this servlet, an introduction can be found here.

The Herberlin php servlet is a pure Java implementation that does not use native libraries. It's easy to install and configure (like any other servlet). It calls the php interpreter as a process according to the specifications of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1. This is a well-documented open standard that is also supported by the Apache web server, although in a production environment the use of the php machine as Apache module is recommended. Anyway, for a development environment, the cgi mode is fast enough. 

http://phpservlet.berlios.de/