PHP 5.4 and Beyond

Built-in Web server for testing

% php -S localhost:8000
PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Sun Mar 11 13:27:09 2012
Listening on localhost:8080
Document root is /home/rasmus
Press Ctrl-C to quit.

The DocumentRoot is the current dir by default, but you can specify a different one.

% php -S localhost:8080 -t /tmp/web
PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Sun Mar 11 13:28:01 2012
Listening on localhost:8080
Document root is /tmp/web
Press Ctrl-C to quit.
[Sun Mar 11 13:31:04 2012] 127.0.0.1:49393 [200]: /
[Sun Mar 11 13:31:04 2012] 127.0.0.1:49394 [200]: /php.png
[Sun Mar 11 13:31:04 2012] 127.0.0.1:49395 [404]: /favicon.ico - No such file or directory

Many frameworks also have a default global router script. You can easily wrap it and call it like this:

% php -S localhost:8080 /path/to/router.php
PHP 5.4.0 Development Server started at Sun Mar 11 13:28:01 2012
Listening on localhost:8080
Document root is /tmp/web
Press Ctrl-C to quit.

And the wrapper might be as simple as:

<?php
if (preg_match('!\.php$!', $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"])) {
    require basename($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);
} else if (strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], '.')) {
    return false; // serve the requested file as-is.
} else {
    Framework::Router($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);
}