PHP provides a built-in web server that is can be used locally when developing an application without
the need to setup a dedicated web server like MAMP, XAMPP, etc. If you have PHP installed on your
development machine, you can use the serve script to launch PHP's built-in server and have
it all setup to work with your CodeIgniter application. To launch the server type the following
from the command line in the main directory:
> php serve
This will launch the server and you can now view your application in your browser at http://localhost:8080.
Note
The built-in development server should only be used on local development machines. It should NEVER be used on a production server.
If you need to run the site on a different host than simply localhost, you'll first need to add the host
to your hosts file. The exact location of the file varies in each of the main operating systems, though
all nix-type systems (include OS X) will typically keep the file at */etc/hosts**.
Once that is done you can use the --host CLI option to specify a different host to run the application at:
> php serve --host=example.dev
By default, the server runs on port 8080 but you might have more than one site running, or already have
another application using that port. You can use the --port CLI option to specify a different one:
> php serve --port=8081