The Microsoft Web Platform Installer, or WPI, is a unified installer
for web applications and related software. WPI can install PHP, Microsoft
SQL Server, the .NET framework and various open source applications, to
name just a few! The installer also configures Internet Information
Services (the web server included with Windows) for these components, so
getting started is easy. But before we begin building our web app, we’ll
use the WPI to set up our development environment.

This article assumes you have a basic understanding of PHP and
relational databases—if you can write PHP and SQL code to manipulate
database records, you’re good to go. We’ll move through the PHP fairly
quickly, in order to focus on the power and simplicity of the
platform.

Installing PHP and SQL Server

First, visit the WPI download
page and get a copy of the installer. You’ll need a system
running Windows XP SP2+, Server 2003 SP1+, Server 2008, Vista SP1, or
Windows 7; I used Vista SP1 for this tutorial. The installer itself is
only 1MB, but be prepared for a couple of hundred megabytes of data
transfer when the installer downloads the components of the
platform.

Before we start installing, check that your system has IIS
installed. IIS is bundled with most editions of Windows, however it is
not included in Home editions. Check Windows
features (note, though, that names vary) under
Programs and Features in the Control Panel to
verify that IIS is installed; if not, simply install IIS before
proceeding.

Open the Web Platform Installer and have a look through the
options available. You may recognise some of the open source
applications, like WordPress, under the
Applications tab; the installer can set up these
applications and all the platform software they require with minimal
fuss.

Switch to the Web Platform tab to start
installing the components we’ll need. Use the
Customize links to select components. At a minimum,
we’ll need to select Web Server >
Application Development >
CGI, Frameworks and Runtimes
> PHP > PHP 5.x, and
everything under Database. If you followed the
previous article, The
Easy Way to Install PHP on Windows, some of these components
will already be installed. Figure 1, “Components to be installed” shows the
components my setup used (plus SQL Server Management Studio):

Figure 1. Components to be installed

Note that SQL Server 2008 Native Client is listed as a dependency
for the PHP driver. The native client software provides ODBC
functionality for the PHP driver and is required even when working with
SQL Server 2005 instances.

Click I Accept and, during the install
procedure, you’ll be asked to configure the authentication for your new
SQL Server setup. In this tutorial we’ll use SQL Server Authentication,
so select Mixed Mode Authentication, instead of
Windows Integrated Authentication; note, though,
that both are fine for development. We’ll keep the default username of
sa, but you can choose any password you want.

warning: Enter a Strong Password

Even though WPI neglects to warn you about it, the installation
of SQL Server Express will not complete if you enter a weak password.
The WPI
troubleshooting page has the details you’ll need to ensure
your password is strong.

Go ahead and let the WPI download and install these items. If you
encounter any challenges, visit the WPI
troubleshooting page.

Your New SQL Server Installation

Once the platform installer is finished, SQL Server should be up
and running on your machine. Start up the SQL Server Management Studio
using the shortcut the installer will have placed in your
Start menu.

Figure 2. Start menu link

You’ll be prompted to connect to an SQL Server instance as shown
in Figure 3, “Connecting to a server instance”. To do so, use the username and
password combination you set up earlier (or your Windows login
credentials, if you chose Windows authentication).

Figure 3. Connecting to a server instance

Note that BUSLN1 is my computer name, and
SQLEXPRESS is the default instance name for the SQL
Server (Express Edition) installed by the WPI. This should be filled in
already, but you may need to choose SQL Server Authentication from the
Authentication methods list. If you can’t connect,
check that SQL Server is running: open up the Services console
(Start > Run and enter
services.msc) as shown in Figure 4, “SQL Server is running”, and check that SQL Server is started.

Figure 4. SQL Server is running

Once you connect, the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), shown
in Figure 5, “The SSMS interface”, will display your databases as well
as other pieces of server information.

Figure 5. The SSMS interface

SSMS allows you to configure, manage, and administer your SQL
Server instance, as well as manage its databases. For more information
about SSMS, see Introducing
SQL Server Management Studio on MSDN.

If you installed the Database Manager for IIS like I did, you can
also verify that your database server is up and running using the
Database Manager within IIS Manager (it’s under the
Management section on the front page). However, the
Database Manager expects to connect to a particular database, so you’ll
have to create one using SSMS first.

WPI has installed a recent release of PHP and configured IIS for it.
Let’s check if IIS is up and running. The easiest way to do this is to
visit http://localhost/ and check
that the default IIS page displays in your browser.

Load up the IIS Manager shown in Figure 6, “The IIS Manager interface”—it’s under Administrative
Tools in Control Panel, but it should also appear if you type
IIS into your Start menu search
bar.

Figure 6. The IIS Manager interface

Here we can configure and administer our IIS server, as well as
managing the hosted websites. Since IIS is included with most editions of
Windows, the WPI has simply added and enabled certain required components,
such as the CGI component. The options you see may
not be exactly the same as those above, but as long as you have CGI
enabled you should be ready to go.

If you couldn’t access your IIS server at http://localhost/ earlier, click on your
web server (the top-level entry on the left pane, most likely labelled
with your computer name; for example, it’s BUSLN1 for
me). Click Start in the
Actions pane on the right. Then select the
Default Web Site and use the
Actions pane on the right to ensure that the web site
is also running.

Now let’s make sure PHP was installed correctly. Our server will be
executing PHP via the FastCGI module, the recommended method for IIS.
First, select the top entry for your server under
Connections on the left, and double-click on
Modules in the middle window (it’s one of the
components grouped under IIS).

Figure 7. The Modules list

You should see FastCgiModule in this list, as
in Figure 7, “The Modules list”. If not, click Configure
Native Modules on the right, and enable the
FastCgiModule. If the
FastCgiModule isn’t an option, click
Register, name the module
FastCgiModule, select
%windir%\System32\inetsrv\iisfcgi.dll as the path to
the module, then enable it.

Now select your Default Web Site, open up the
Modules section, and once again ensure that
FastCgiModule is in the list. (If not, use the
previous instructions to put it there.)

Finally, with Default Web Site selected,
double-click Handler Mappings.

Figure 8. Handler Mappings list

The WPI should have added an entry titled
PHP_via_FastCgi, as in Figure 8, “Handler Mappings list”, when it installed PHP. However, if this
option doesn’t appear in the list, click Add Module
Mapping on the right, enter *.php as the
request path, select FastCgiModule from the module
list, and select your php-cgi.exe binary for the
path—this should be in C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe or something similar. (Remember to use
quotes around the executable path, because of that space in
Program Files.) Select a name like PHP via FastCgi, and click OK. IIS will prompt
you to create a FastCgi application for PHP, as shown in Figure 9, “Adding a module mapping”.

Figure 9. Adding a module mapping

Now we’re ready to run our PHP applications under IIS. Your default
website will have a document root similar to
C:\inetpub\wwwroot—you can change this using the IIS
Manager. For now, remove the default IIS files in this folder and create
an index.php file. Open up your favourite text editor
and add the following:

<?php
phpinfo();
exit;

Switch to your web browser and visit http://localhost/
again ( or http://localhost/index.php if you didn’t remove the
IIS splash page). Search for sqlsrv, which is the
native SQL Server driver for PHP that’s provided by Microsoft. Skip the
first entry and you should find that the driver is installed and enabled,
as Figure 10, “SQL Server information from phpinfo” shows.

Figure 10. SQL Server information from phpinfo

Now let’s create a database and retrieve it using PHP. Switch back
to the SQL Server Management Studio, connect to your database server if
you haven’t already, and create a new database. Simply right-click on
Databases, and select New
Database… to display the New Database
dialog shown in Figure 11, “Creating a new database”.

Figure 11. Creating a new database

You’ll see a new entry appear for your new database under
Databases. Expand the entry for your database,
right-click on Tables, and select New
Table… to create a new table.

Figure 12. Creating a new database table

You can change the table name using the
Properties pane on the right, enter the schema
information (here we just have an ID and a name field
in a table called people), and set your
id field to a primary key by right-clicking the
Column Name field. For the equivalent of an
auto increment field, select ID as the
Identity Column under Table
Designer on the right. This isn’t entirely necessary, but I
figured veteran MySQL-ers would look for this option.

Finally, click the Save button (or hit
Ctrl+S) to create your table. You’ll see it appear in your
Object Explorer on the left, as in Figure 13, “New table created”.

Figure 13. New table created

Right-click dbo.people on the left, click
Edit Top 200 Rows, and enter some dummy data
into a row, as shown in Figure 14, “Entering data”.

Figure 14. Entering data

Now go back to your text editor, open the
index.php file we worked on before, and update it
with the following:

<?php
$server = "BUSLN1\\SQLEXPRESS";
$options = array(
  "UID" => "sa",
  "PWD" => "password",
  "Database" => "test"
);
$conn = sqlsrv_connect($server, $options);
if ($conn === false) die("<pre>".print_r(sqlsrv_errors(), true));
echo "Successfully connected!";
sqlsrv_close($conn);

You’ll definitely need to change the options in italics—these should
reflect the configuration information you previously entered in the
connection dialog of SQL Server Management Studio. Also, we use
\\ instead of \ in the server name
because \ is the escaping character in PHP. Change
$server to reflect your computer name, and replace the
“PWD” array value with the password you chose. If you
selected Windows Authentication when you installed SQL Server, leave out
the “UID” and “PWD” lines; SQL
Server will use your current Windows account to authenticate with the
database server.

This code attempts to connect to the local SQL Server instance using
the native SQL Server driver. The API is slightly different from the
native mysql, mysqli, or
pgsql drivers for PHP, but it’s easy to pick up. For
further details on the driver, see the MSDN hosted documentation.

Load up http://localhost/index.php and
you should see the message “Successfully connected!” If not, check that
your SQL Server is running and that these credentials work in SQL Server
Management Studio; the PHP driver should give you the same result
(including the error message wording). For further details on connecting
to SQL Server, see the sqlsrv_connect
documentation.

Now let’s retrieve the row we created earlier. Head back to your
text editor and add this code after the "Successfully connected!" line:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM dbo.people";
$query = sqlsrv_query($conn, $sql);
if ($query === false)
{
  exit("<pre>".print_r(sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}
while ($row = sqlsrv_fetch_array($query))
{
  echo "<p>Hello, $row[name]!</p>";
}
sqlsrv_free_stmt($query);

This will retrieve all records from our people
table, and output the value in the name field of every
record. Finally, we call sqlsrv_free_stmt to free up
the resources associated with the query statement. This last call is
optional, but can make a difference for complex prepared statements and
large result sets.

Visit http://localhost/index.php in
your web browser; you should see an entry for every record in your
people table. Add a few more rows in SQL Server
Management Studio and refresh the page to get a new result set. Now that
we know how to access SQL Server from PHP, we’re ready to build our web
application!