PHP Oracle Configuration and Connection Example

Aim
The aim of this tutorial is to setup PHP so that it works with Oracle OCI (Oracle Caller Interface), and demonstrate a small example of how you connect to an Oracle Database using php. This can be used for as a standalone php script or PHP within Apache. It also demonstrates a simple oracle/PHP connection string, connecting to a database and executing some SQL.

Assumptions
This article assumes that you have Php Installed. You may or may not have Apache Installed.

Versions used in this example

Sofware/Component	Image
Windows XP SP2	N/A
Php	N/A
Php OCI 8 extentions	php_oci8-1.3.5-5.2-Win32-vc6-x86.zip
Oracle Basic instant Client	instantclient-basic-win32-11.1.0.7.0.zip

Links to these files can be found here

Configuring Oracle OCI

• Download and extract the Php OCI 8 extensions - php_oci8-1.3.5-5.2-Win32-vc6-x86.zip
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• Copy the php_oci8.dll and the php_oci8_11g.dll to your php "ext" directory. This is normally found here C:\Program Files\PHP\ext
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• Download and extract the oracle basic instant client- instantclient-basic-win32-11.1.0.7.0.zip
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• copy the oci.dll to a directory in your path. To keep things simple you can copy this to the the same C:\Program Files\PHP\ext directory.
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• Next edit your php.ini file. Again this can be found in your php installation. C:\Program Files\PHP\php.ini. If this 'extention' is commented uncomment it. If it is not there, add it
  

  ; Note that it should be the name of the module only; no directory information ; needs to go here. Specify the location of the extension with the ; extension_dir directive above. extension=php_oci8.dll ; Windows Extensions

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• If you are running Apache, you can restart Apache to pick up these changes.
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Oracle Connection Example

• Create the example below and save it. Modify it to reflect your database.
  

  1. <?php 2. $c = oci_connect('mariner', 'mariner', '//mymarinerdb.tmicro.com:2523/MARPRD'); 3. 4. $q = "select * from VMDEVICE_PATTERNS where name='$devicename'"; 5. $stmt = oci_parse($c, $q); 6. 7. oci_execute($stmt, OCI_DEFAULT); 8. while ($row = oci_fetch_array($stmt, OCI_ASSOC)) { 9. echo $row['PATTERN']."\n"; 10. } 11. 12. oci_free_statement($stmt); 13. oci_close($c); 14. ?> Hide line numbers

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• Now you can run this in the command line, or call it from your Apache http server.