Upgrading PHP from 7.1 to 7.2 with Homebrew in macOS but still seeing PHP 7.1

Question

I am trying to upgrade my PHP version from 7.1 to 7.2 on macOS and with Homebrew.

I did the following steps:

brew install php72

brew services stop php71
brew unlink php71

brew link php72
brew services start php72

Everything seemed to work fine. When I do php --version I get:

PHP 7.2.9 (cli) (built: Aug 16 2018 21:40:59) ( NTS ) Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies with Zend OPcache v7.2.9, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

But if I try to run a PHP script with phpinfo() the information still says PHP Version 7.1.20.

If I run brew services list I have the following services running:

dnsmasq    started root     /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist
mariadb    started xy       /Users/xy/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mariadb.plist
nginx      started root     /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist
php        started root     /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.php.plist
[email protected]    stopped

What could be the reason?

Solution

brew unlink php71 and brew link php72 will tweak your php command line to the right path and version, but Apache will not be affected until you change its config file.

First, locate your httpd.conf file path:

httpd -V | grep SERVER_CONFIG_FILE

You may also check:

apachectl -t -D DUMP_INCLUDES

Then:

• Open your httpd.conf file and locate the line starting with LoadModule php
• Comment this line with #, and add your 7.2 line instead. You can get your line from querying the following command in the Terminal:
• brew info [email protected] | grep LoadModule
• it should look like: LoadModule php7_module /usr/local/opt/[email protected]/lib/httpd/modules/libphp7.so
• Finally, restart Apache: sudo apachectl restart
• your script should now be runing with php7.2 version

---

There's also detailed instructions about using a php switcher here. Once installed, you can switch from one version to another like this (it will link both Apache and the command line automatically):

sphp 7.1
sphp 7.2
sphp 5.6
etc..

Comments

[Giacomo1968]

This is a good answer. But Apache needs to be restarted for the new module to be picked up.