Appendix B. Extension Overview
In addition to the functions from the standard extensions described in Appendix A, a number of optional extensions provide PHP with additional functionality. Generally, these optional extensions are interfaces to third-party code libraries. To use these functions, you need to install the libraries they depend on and recompile PHP with the appropriate compile-time directives. Alternately, if you are using a Windows version of PHP, you can simply find the extension name under the “Dynamic Extensions” section in the php.ini file and uncomment (remove the semicolon) the line for the extension you want. Restart Apache and you are ready to go.
This chapter is intended as an indicative tour of the extensions provided with the PHP distribution, but not as a definitive reference to the functions provided by those extensions. Additional documentation for these extensions is available from the PHP web site http://www.php.net.
Starting with PHP 5, numerous extensions that were previously bundled with PHP are now distributed through PECL (the PHP Extension Community Library) at http://pecl.php.net instead of in the main PHP distribution.
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