Execute PHP scripts within Node.js web server

Question

What steps are necessary to have a Node.js web server function like Apache executing PHP scripts? Any way to integrate PHP within Node.js?

Note: I don't want to execute PHP scripts directly within Node.js but "routed" through an Apache instance or something similar.

Answer 1

I had the same question. I tried invoking php through the shell interface, and it produced the desired result:

var exec = require("child_process").exec;
app.get('/', function(req, res){exec("php index.php", function (error, stdout, stderr) {res.send(stdout);});});

I'm sure this is not high on the recommended practices list, but it seemed to do what I wanted. If, on the other hand, you don't want to execute PHP scripts directly from Node.js but want to relay them from another web server that does, this seems to do the trick:

var exec = require("child_process").exec;
app.get('/', function(req, res){exec("wget -q -O - http://localhost/", function (error, stdout, stderr) {res.send(stdout);});});