[RESOLVED] <?php tags are not being parced

gimelzwa

Help!

I am a newbie just trying to get my first php file to work on the XAMPP apache server.

I have the apache turned on from the XAMPP control panel, and the index page along with every other php page included with XAMPP works fine.

It just doesn't work when ever I make my own php file, even though I have it stored in the htdocs files of XAMPP like I'm supposed to and bringing the page up on the browser with the URL http://localhost/helloworld.php.

The helloworld.php file is just as following:

<html>
<head><title>Hello World</title></head>
<body>
<?php
echo "Hello World!";
?>
</body>
</html>

The page displays nothing unless I insert a <p> just after the " in the echo statement changing it to "<p>Hello World!"; in which case only the html is parced for the <p> tag, and I get displayed Hello World!;?> on the browser page.
A color coded source page for Motzilla shows that every thing between the <?php tag and th <p> tag is interpreted as being one tag yet not recognized as any valid html tag. Also it recognized everything between the <?php and ?> the same way.

This is most puzzling for a newbie, and it's like getting stuck at the starting line.

Please help.

jml

bradgrafelman

Are you using Windows? If so, did you turn off the "Hide file extensions for known file types" feature to ensure that you aren't getting files named helloworld.php.txt for example?

coldwerturkey

being a newb myself, a better way to see a clear result if php is working w/out html is to make a page, info.php, with the following

<?php
echo phpinfo();
?>

if php's working, it should spit out a huge page,

edit: **fixed it

bradgrafelman

I believe coldwerturkey meant [man]phpinfo/man instead of info().

gimelzwa

The file is a php file for sure since when I put the mouse curser over the file, it says it's a php file. Also the file is obviously a webpage file instead of a text file because of the Internet Explorer icon.

I always save the file in unicode format with the php extention.

gimelzwa

I tried making an info.php file as instructed, and the page on the browser is completely blank.

Accordingly, this means that php is not working. Yet the php files that are included with XAMPP still do work. Only files which I create don't work.

Maybe there is some configuration that needs to be done in php.ini file perhaps.

NogDog

gimelzwa;10881388 wrote:
The file is a php file for sure since when I put the mouse curser over the file, it says it's a php file. Also the file is obviously a webpage file instead of a text file because of the Internet Explorer icon.

I always save the file in unicode format with the php extention.

Try saving it as a plain ASCII text file instead (but still with the .php suffix, of course). PHP <6 does not do Unicode.

gimelzwa

I saved the info.php file as an ANSI instead of a Unicode, and low and behold I get a page full of Chinese characters from http://localhost/info.php.

Perhaps this is the problem with saving in Unicode instead of ANSI.

I'm testing more pages now to see if this is so.

gimelzwa

It works now since I saved the files as text type and in UTF-8 encoding.

I will do a little more testing before deciding if this problem is fixed.

gimelzwa

OK Thank you very much. It was just a matter of how I was saving the files that was the only problem.