Enabling PostgreSQL support in PHP on Mac OS X

Question

I'm having a terribly difficult time getting the command "pg_connect()" to work properly on my Mac. I'm currently writing a PHP script (to be executed from console) to read a PostgreSQL database and email a report.

I've gone into my php.ini file and added

extension=pgsql.so

But, I'm met with the following error.

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/php_pgsql.so' - dlopen(/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/php_pgsql.so, 9): image not found in Unknown on line 0
PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function pg_connect() in... (blah file here)

When running phpinfo(), I see nothing about PostgreSQL, so what is my issue here?

Answer 1

The PHP version that comes bundled with OS X doesn't include PostgreSQL. You'll have to compile the extension yourself. Here are some instructions:

1. Find your version of PHP: php -v.
2. Download the version of PHP that matches yours: curl -O http://us.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.3.tar.gz. (This example downloads PHP 5.3.3 but this must match your version)
3. Extract the archive you downloaded: tar -xzvf php-5.3.3.tar.gz
4. Change to the PostgreSQL's extension directory: cd php-5.3.3/ext/pgsql/
5. Type phpize.
6. Type ./configure.
7. Type make.
8. Type sudo make install.
9. Add the extension to you php.ini file by adding extension=pgsql.so. (You may already have done this)
10. Restart Apache.

Update for OS X Mountain Lion Apple has removed autoconf from the newer versions of XCode so the procedure above will fail at #5. To solve that problem:

1. Type /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fksSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/master/Library/Contributions/install_homebrew.rb)".
2. Type sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/Cellar.
3. Type brew update.
4. Type brew install autoconf.

That should install autoconf and allow you to install the module using the instructions above.