Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server

Welcome to the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server PHP 7 (Release Candidate)

The Microsoft Drivers for PHP for 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 PDO for accessing data in all editions of SQL Server 2005 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 preview contains the SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV drivers for PHP 7 with improvements on both drivers and some limitations (see Limitations below for details). Upcoming release(s) will contain more functionality, bug fixes, and more (see Plans below for more details).

The Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server Team

##Announcements

June 13, 2016 (4.0.5): The quality of SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV is improved and includes some bug fixes:

• Added ability to connect to Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.
• Fixed some memory leaks in data retrieval.
• Fixed issue with error handling in bound stream parameters when send_stream_at_exec option is set to false.
• Fixed issue with when connecting twice when Sqlsrv_errors configured to only WARNINGS.
• Fixed issue with double and string as input-output parameters in PDO_SQLSRV driver.
• Fixed a heap corruption in PDO_SQLSRV connection.

May 3, 2016 (4.0.4): The quality of SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV is improved and includes some bug fixes:

• Fixed retrieving stream data and metadata.
• Fixed issue with bind stream parameters.
• Fixed issue with retrieval in error case when trying to retrieve a non-streamble data type with SQLSRV_SQLTYPE_STREAM option
• Fixed issue with querying after another query with empty array of parameters.
• Fixed issue with retrieving integers as output parameter in SQLSRV 64-bit.
• Fixed issue scrollable statement option in SQLSRV_PDO 64-bit.
• Improved handling closed connection and statement resources.
• Fixed issue with binding bit parameter.
• Fix for The $driver_options (for specifying encoding) is included in PDOStatement::bindParam is included in PHP 7.0.6 release.

April 12, 2016 (4.0.3): The PDO_SQLSRV driver (32-bit and 64-bit) is now available. For the SQLSRV driver, we also have a few bug fixes to share:

• Fixed ability to fetch a user defined object into a class
• Fixed issue with re-preparing the same statement with referenced datetime parameters
• Fixed issue with binding output parameters with php type string with binary and char encodings and sql types SQLSRV_SQLTYPE_NCHAR and SQLSRV_SQLTYPE_NVARCHAR

March 15, 2016 (4.0.2): 64-bit support is now available for the SQLSRV driver. We also have some additional minor improvements to share:

• Fixed the ability to retrieve strings as an output parameter
• Fixed a number of memory leaks in initialization

Feb 23, 2016 (4.0.1): Thanks to the community’s input, we have mostly been focusing on making updates to support native 64-bit and the PDO driver. We will be sharing these updates in the coming weeks once we have something functional. In the meantime, we have a couple of minor updates to the SQLSRV driver to share:

• Fixed the ability to bind parameters with datetime types
• Fixed output and bidirectional (input/output) parameters. Note to users: we determined that output and bidirectional parameters now need to be passed in by reference (i.e. &$var) so that they can be updated with the output data and added an error check for these cases.
• Updated refcounting to avoid unnecessary reference counting for scalar values

Build

Note: if you prefer, you can use the pre-compiled binary found HERE

####Prerequisites

You must first be able to build PHP 7 without including these extensions. For help with doing this, see the official PHP website for building your own PHP on Windows.

####Compile the drivers

1. Copy the sqlsrv and/or pdo_sqlsrv source code directory from this repository into the ext subdirectory.

2. Run buildconf.bat to rebuild the configure.js script to include the driver.

3. Run configure.bat --with-odbcver=0x0380 and the desired driver options (as below) [plus other options such as --disable-zts for the Non Thread Safe build] to generate the makefile. You can run configure.bat --help to see what other options are available.

• For SQLSRV use: --enable-sqlsrv=shared
• For PDO_SQLSRV use: --enable-pdo=shared --with-pdo-sqlsrv=shared

4. Run nmake. It is suggested that you run the entire build. If you wish to do so, run nmake clean first.

5. To install the resulting build, run nmake install or just copy php_sqlsrv.dll and/or php_pdo_sqlsrv.dll to your PHP extension directory.

This software has been compiled and tested under PHP 7.0.7 using the Visual C++ 2015 compiler.

Install

####Prerequisites

• A Web server such as Internet Information Services (IIS) is required. Your Web server must be configured to run PHP
• Microsoft ODBC Driver 11 or Microsoft ODBC Driver 13

####Enable the drivers

1. Make sure that the driver is in your PHP extension directory (you can simply copy it there if you did not use nmake install).

2. Enable it within your PHP installation's php.ini: extension=php_sqlsrv.dll and/or extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv.dll. If necessary, specify the extension directory using extension_dir, for example: extension_dir = "C:\PHP\ext"

3. Restart the Web server.

Sample Code

For samples, please see the sample folder. For setup instructions, see [here] phpazure

Limitations

This preview contains the PHP 7 port of the SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV drivers, and does not provide backwards compatibility with PHP 5. The following items have known issues:

SQLSRV:

• Memory management.

Future Plans

• Linux Version
• Expand SQL 16 Feature Support (example: Always Encrypted)
• Build Verification/Fundamental Tests
• 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:

• Report each issue as a new issue (but check first if it's already been reported)
• Try to be detailed in your report. Useful information for good bug reports include:
  • What you are seeing and what the expected behaviour is
  • Which driver: SQLSRV or PDO_SQLSRV?
  • Environment details: e.g. PHP version, thread safe (TS) or non-thread safe (NTS), 32-bit &/or 64-bit?
  • Table schema (for some issues the data types make a big difference!)
  • Any other relevant information you want to share
• Try to include a PHP script demonstrating the isolated problem.

Thank you!

FAQs

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 extremely hard to release future versions of the driver. We will share future plans once they solidify over the next few weeks.

Q: What's next?

A: On Jan 29, 2016 we released an early technical preview for our PHP Driver and several since. We will continue releasing frequent technical previews until we reach production quality.

Q: Is Microsoft taking pull requests for this project?

A: We will not be seeking to take pull requests until GA, Build Verification, and Fundamental tests are released. At this point Microsoft will also begin actively developing using this GitHub project as the prime repository.

License

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

Resources

Documentation: MSDN Online Documentation. Please note that this documentation is not yet updated for PHP 7.

Team Blog: Browse our blog for comments and announcements from the team in the team blog.

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