How To Install PHP 7 on Ubuntu 15.04

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of PHP 7 on your Ubuntu 15.04. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP code is interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the resulting web page: PHP commands can be embedded directly into an HTML source document rather than calling an external file to process data. PHP 7 comes with numerous new and improved features. One of the most noticeable is the new Zend Engine version. Also, other important improvements are enhanced performance and significantly reduced memory usage. Thus, PHP 7 can be up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you the step-by-step installation of PHP 7 in the Ubuntu 15.04 server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 15.04.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install PHP 7 on Ubuntu 15.04

Step 1. First of all, make sure that all packages are up to date.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Add the PPA (Personal Package Archive) repository for PHP 7 in your system.

Run the following command to add PPA repository PHP 7:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php-7.0

Now, install PHP 7 using the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y php7.0

Your server should restart Apache automatically after the installation of PHP. If it doesn’t, execute this command:

sudo service apache2 restart

Step 3. Verify the Install PHP version.

Once it is completed, you can ensure that the latest stable release of PHP 7 is installed on your system by using the command:

# php -v

PHP 7.0.0 (cli) (built: Dec  27 2015 20:42:32) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies

Step 4. Install PHP modules.

If you like to search all the available PHP 7 modules you can use to command:

sudo apt-cache search php7-*

You may want to install some other PHP extensions required by your applications. Here is the list:

php7.0-common - Common files for packages built from the PHP source
libapache2-mod-php7.0 - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (Apache 2 module)
php7.0-cgi - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (CGI binary)
php7.0-cli - command-line interpreter for the PHP scripting language
php7.0-phpdbg - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (PHPDBG binary)
php7.0-fpm - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (FPM-CGI binary)
libphp7.0-embed - HTML-embedded scripting language (Embedded SAPI library)
php7.0-dev - Files for PHP7.0 module development
php7.0-dbg - Debug symbols for PHP7.0
php7.0-curl - CURL module for PHP
php7.0-gd - GD module for PHP
php7.0-imap - IMAP module for PHP
php7.0-intl - Internationalisation module for PHP
php7.0-ldap - LDAP module for PHP
php7.0-pgsql - PostgreSQL module for PHP
php7.0-pspell - pspell module for PHP
php7.0-recode - recode module for PHP
php7.0-snmp - SNMP module for PHP
php7.0-tidy - tidy module for PHP
php7.0-json - JSON module for PHP
php-all-dev - package depending on all supported PHP development packages
php7.0-sybase - Sybase module for PHP
php7.0-modules-source - PHP 7.0 modules source package
php7.0-sqlite3 - SQLite3 module for PHP
php7.0-mysql - MySQL module for PHP

Step 5. Testing PHP 7 on Ubuntu 15.04

To test PHP, create a test file named info.php with the content below. Save the file, then browse to it to see if PHP is working:

nano /var/www/html/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP 7. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing PHP 7 on your Ubuntu 15.04 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PHP website.