kinda newbie question... running PHP as a cgi thingy...

richblend

ok, im not really a newbie, im pretty god at PHP, but in the book i learnt from it would go on about running php as a cgi thingy or something. now, i know cgi isnt a language itself, its just an interface, and perl is usually used. so does this mean you can use PHP instead of perl or what? sorry for being so vague but if someone could shed some light on it, id be grateful.

Weedpacket

Yes. PHP understands the Common Gateway Interface. It basically means that instead of operating as part of the web server (the preferred method), it runs as a separate program that the server calls on when needed (using the CGI protocol so that both programs can understand each other).

richblend

aha. so does that mean that i can use PHP on a server that doesnt have PHP installed (as long as it has a cgi-bin)?

and also, if the server DOES have PHP, using it as a cgi script is pretty pointless yes? so i dont really need to worry about it?

dalecosp

Yes, you can. There are a few security issues that might be involved, which is why the server module is preferred over CGI, as Weedpacket mentions ...
Yup, I'd think so. PHP now comes with a CLI, also, which is pretty cool, IMHO, on 'Nix. Now I don't care a mite for bash scripting 😃

HalfaBee

A fairly large webhost runs php as a CGI.
It is quite good as the script is run in the users name and not as nobody or some other name.
It makes file access a lot easier as the permissions don't need to be changed to write to a file.
It is also supposed to be more secure than the apache module.

HalfaBee