Do you need .NET installed to run Php Web serivices?

Question

I know you need .NET installed to run ASP.NET and C# web serivces and applications, but I heard you can do web services with Php as well. But since I am only familiar with .NET web services, was wondering... do you need .NET installed to run all types of Web services? or coudl I setup up a web service with Php and run it on Apache, or do I need to do the whole windows deal (iis, windows server, etc)?

Answer 1

You do not need .NET to run a Web service with PHP, but PHP will not run .NET Web services.



A Web service is just XML. It's not platform-dependent in terms of consumption; its very purpose is to be cross-platform in terms of use.



How the XML in a Web service gets created, however, is dependent on the machine creating the XML -- so, in that sense, it is platform-dependent. You can't take a Web service you wrote in .NET, plop it into PHP and expect it to generate XML.



That said, you can write PHP scripts that provide Web services. You can also use PHP to consume Web services.



You can install PHP on any Windows box and run it as a CGI application.

Answer 2

Nope, you can run PHP on Apache and not have to worry about anything Microsoft-related. There's a package of Apache that comes with PHP pre-installed/configured but I don't remember what it's called - nevertheless it's not that hard, just follow the directions carefully.

Answer 3

For PHP you can totally forget about ".NET", "ASP" "C#" and everything like that.



The only thing you do need is a webserver - IIS or Apache will do, though Apache is recommended.



Check out the PHP website for more information:

http://uk2.php.net/install.windows