Microsoft Drivers for PHP for Microsoft SQL Server

Welcome to the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for Microsoft SQL Server

The Microsoft Drivers for PHP for Microsoft SQL Server are PHP extensions that allow for the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. The SQLSRV extension provides a procedural interface while the PDO_SQLSRV extension implements PHP Data Objects (PDO) for accessing data in all editions of SQL Server 2012 and later (including Azure SQL DB). These drivers rely on the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server to handle the low-level communication with SQL Server.

This release contains the SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV drivers for PHP 8.0+ with improvements on both drivers and some limitations. Upcoming releases will contain additional functionalities, bug fixes, and more.

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Status of Most Recent Builds

Azure Pipelines (Linux)	AppVeyor (Windows)	Coverage (Windows)
[]az-site	[]av-site	[]codecov-site

Get Started

Please follow the Getting started page.

Announcements

Please follow SQL Server Drivers for announcements.

Prerequisites

For full details on the system requirements for the drivers, see the system requirements on Microsoft Docs.

On the client machine:

8.1.x, 8.2.x, 8.3.x
Microsoft ODBC Driver 18, 17 or 13
If using a Web server such as Internet Information Services (IIS) or Apache, it must be configured to run PHP

On the server side, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and above on Windows are supported, as are Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and above on Linux.

Building and Installing the Drivers on Windows

The drivers are distributed as pre-compiled extensions for PHP found on the releases page. They are available in thread-safe and non-thread-safe versions, and in 32-bit (Windows only) and 64-bit versions. The source code for the drivers is also available, and you can compile them as thread safe or non-thread-safe versions. The thread safety configuration of your web server will determine which version you need.

If you choose to build the drivers, you must be able to build PHP 8.* without including these extensions. For help building PHP on Windows, see the official PHP website. For details on compiling the drivers, see the documentation – an example buildscript is provided, but you can also compile the drivers manually.

To load the drivers, make sure that the driver is in your PHP extension directory and enable it in your PHP installation’s php.ini file by adding extension=php_sqlsrv.dll and/or extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv.dll to the ini file. If necessary, specify the extension directory using extension_dir, for example: extension_dir = "C:\PHP\ext". Note that the precompiled binaries have different names – substitute accordingly in php.ini. For more details on loading the drivers, see Loading the PHP SQL Driver on Microsoft Docs.

Finally, if running PHP in a Web server, restart the Web server.

Install (UNIX)

For full instructions on installing the drivers on all supported Unix platforms, see the installation instructions on Microsoft Docs.

Sample Code

For PHP code samples, please see the sample folder or the code samples on Microsoft Docs. For information on how to use the driver, see Microsoft Drivers for PHP for Microsoft SQL Server.

Limitations and Known Issues

Please refer to Releases for the latest limitations and known issues.

Version number

The version numbers of the PHP drivers follow semantic versioning:

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH,

MAJOR version is incremented when an incompatible API change is made,
MINOR version is incremented when functionality is added in a backwards-compatible manner, and
PATCH version is incremented when backwards-compatible bug fixes are made.

The version number may have trailing pre-release version identifiers to indicate the stability and/or build metadata.

Pre-release version is denoted by a hyphen followed by beta or RC followed by a number. Production quality releases do not contain the pre-release version. beta has lower precedence than RC. Note that the PECL package version numbers do not have the hyphen before the pre-release version, owing to restrictions in PECL. An example of a PECL package version is 5.9.0beta2.
Build metadata may be denoted by a plus sign followed by a number of digits, such as 5.9.0-beta2+13930. Build metadata does not affect the precedence order.

Future Plans

Expand SQL Server feature support (example: Azure Active Directory, Always Encrypted, etc.)
Add more verification/fundamental tests
Improve performance
Bug fixes

Guidelines for Reporting Issues

We appreciate you taking the time to test the driver, provide feedback and report any issues. It would be extremely helpful if you:

First check the FAQ for common problems
Report each issue as a new issue (but check first if it’s already been reported)
Please address the questions in the new issue template and provide scripts, table schema, and/or any details that may help reproduce the problem(s)

Thank you!

Questions

Q: Can we get dates for any of the Future Plans listed above?

A: At this time, Microsoft is not able to announce dates. We are working hard to release future versions of the driver and will share future plans as appropriate.

Q: What’s next?

A: We will continue working on our future plans and releasing previews of upcoming releases

Q: Is Microsoft taking pull requests for this project?

A: Yes. Please submit pull requests to the dev branch, not the master branch.

License

The Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server are licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more details.

Code of conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Resources

Documentation: Microsoft Docs Online.

SQL Server Drivers: Please browse the articles for announcements of various SQL Server Drivers.

Known Issues: Please visit the project on Github to view outstanding issues and report new ones.