Configuring OCI8 and PDO_OCI on PHP 7

Hey folks!!! I’ve been working with PHP and MySQL for some years now, and in the last few months I needed to connect to Oracle. I spent a lot of time researching, and today I’d like to put together a simple tutorial so you can have a reliable source on how to do this installation. I used Ubuntu 16.04 and PHP 7.0.

INSTALLING OCI8

First we need to download INSTANT ORACLE and the ORACLE SDK: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linuxx86-64soft-092277.html The files are instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip and instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip.

After downloading, let’s create a directory to store the files we just downloaded:

mkdir /opt/oracle

Let’s go into the folder we just created and extract the files:

cd /opt/oracle
unzip instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip
unzip instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip

Next, let’s create a symbolic link for the Instant Client:

ln -s /opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2/libclntsh.so.12.1 /opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2/libclntsh.so
ln -s /opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2/libocci.so.12.1 /opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2/libocci.so

We need to add the folder to our ldconfig:

echo /opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2 >/etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle-instantclient

And finally, update the Dynamic Linker Run-Time Bindings:

ldconfig

ADDITIONAL PACKAGES

To install OCI we need some extra packages.

First, run this command:

apt-get install php-dev php-pear build-essential libaio1

Once these packages are installed, we need the oci8 file. First, update PECL:

pecl channel-update pecl.php.net

Then run:

pecl install oci8

When the prompt asks for a path, type:

instantclient,/opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2

We need to tell PHP to load the OCI8 module:

echo "extension =oci8.so" >> /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
echo "extension =oci8.so" >> /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini
echo "extension =oci8.so" >> /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

We also need to add the environment variables to Apache:

echo "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2" >> /etc/apache2/envvars
echo "export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2" >> /etc/apache2/envvars
echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" >> /etc/environment

Restart your computer.

To check that the extension was installed correctly, run:

php -m | grep 'oci8'

If oci8 shows up in your terminal, it was installed correctly.

To finish the OCI8 installation, just restart php-fpm:

service php7.0-fpm restart

INSTALLING PDO_OCI

First, download the source: http://us1.php.net/get/php-7.0.27.tar.bz2/from/a/mirror

Extract the source:

tar -jxvf 7.0.27.tar.bz2

Copy the pdo_oci directory to /tmp:

sudo cp -r php-7.0.27/ext/pdo_oci /tmp

Enter the directory we just created:

cd /tmp/pdo_oci

Run the following commands in sequence:

sudo phpize
sudo ./configure --with-pdo-oci=instantclient,/opt/oracle/instantclient_12_2,12.2
sudo make
sudo make install

After running the commands above, create a symbolic link:

$ sudo touch /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/pdo_oci.ini
$ sudo echo extension=pdo_oci.so > /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/pdo_oci.ini
$ sudo ln -s /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/pdo_oci.ini /etc/php/7.0/apache2/conf.d/20-pdo_oci.ini

Restart Apache and your PHP development environment will be ready to connect to Oracle.