PHP's built-in web server

A little while ago I had to POST some data to an endpoint which did not exist yet. I wanted to validate the structure of my request and see if it would arrive at the endpoint. After some quick research into API mocking not yielding what I was really looking for, I remembered PHP's built-in web server.

Sometimes the easiest solution is the best solution.

Hosting a single file

For my implementation a simple index file that returns the posted JSON payload was enough.

<?php
 
header('Content-Type: application/json');
 
echo file_get_contents('php://input');

Then I served the file using:

php -S localhost:8000 index.php

Now I could see my calls were arriving at the newly created endpoint and I could validate the structure based on the response I got.

Usage in Laravel

This works in Laravel projects as well, as a matter of fact this is what the php artisan serve command does under the hood.

All we need to do is pass a document root directory using the -t flag, in Laravel this is the public directory.

php -S localhost:8000 -t public

But you're probably better off just using php artisan serve in this scenario, seeing as it's integrated in Laravel.

So if you're ever in a pinch and need spin up a quick web server, remember php -S.