PHP not loading php_pgsql.dll on Windows

Question

PHP 5.2.8 is refusing to load php_pgsql.dll, with the following error:

Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library \'D:\\PHP\\ext\\

Answer 1

As Ondřej Bouda mentioned: Setting up Windows environment variables is enough. No copies of dlls, no entries to http-conf. Just add the php-directory (C:\xampp\php) to PATH. Don't forget to restart XAMPP-Control-Panel if you use this, otherwise it won't know the changes. (And restart Apache of cause.)

For instance, on XAMPP, it was sufficient to put the PHP directory (i.e., C:\xampp\php) to the system PATH variable. – Ondřej Bouda

Answer 2

This is an update to @Dayron Armas Peña 's answer. The php bundled pgsql 'dll' is found in the following location:

LoadFile "C:/wamp/bin/php/php5.4.12/libpq.dll"

Adding the above line to the httpd.conf file apart from uncommenting the required lines in the php.ini files has solved my problem.

Answer 3

Check out the info on the PHP PostgreSQL installation page: http://us.php.net/manual/en/pgsql.installation.php

On a Windows server, configured with Apache, adding the following line to httpd.conf to load libpq.dll can save you a lot of time :

LoadFile "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/8.4/bin/libpq.dll"

Note that you will have to change your folder accordingly to the installation path and version of PostgreSQL you have installed. Also note that having Apache and PostgreSQL on the same server for production environments is not recommended.

This fixed my setup instantly.

Answer 4

For those willing to make their PHP install only capable to access PostGres servers, without actually installing PostGres, you need to:

• enable php_pgsql.dll (and php_pdo_pgsql.dll, if using PDO) extension in PHP.INI,
• make sure libpq.dll, libiconv-2.dll and libintl-8.dll are in the path. These are the php_pgsql.dll dependencies.

These 3 DLLs can be found in the PostGres install. I just copied them into apache\bin, that way I keep everything self contained. Doing that, apache can start the PHP engine just fine, with PostGres support.

Answer 5

The only time I've seen this error (and the file name and ext path were definitely correct) was when I tried using an incorrect version of the DLL ie. I used one that was compiled against a different version of PHP to the one I was running.

Make sure your version is definitely the one compiled against PHP 5.2.8.

Edit: or, the permissions on the file were set incorrectly.

Answer 6

Copy file libpq.dll from location /bin/php/ to location /bin/apache//bin. Restart the wamp server.