Why are my php tags converted to html comments?

Question

A friend's lamp host seems to be misconfigured. I try to execute php, but it doesn't seem to be working.

In Chrome's inspect element:

<?php echo 'test'; ?> 

becomes :

<!--?php echo 'test'; ?-->

Furthermore, its been triggering a file download, rather than opening it as a webpage.

I've tried various code in an .htaccess file, but it doesn't seem to have any effect:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

Answer 1

This answer doesn't apply to the OP's specific variant of this problem, but I had the basic same issue – <? var_dump($test); ?> being converted to <!--? var_dump($test); ?--> – which I could solve by enabling short_open_tag in php.ini.

Answer 2

Sounds to me that your PHP is not correctly configured or installed in your lamp configuration. What distribution are you using? It might be as simple as running a command to re-install PHP, otherwise you will likely need to compile apache with php support.

Answer 3

Sounds like you are using an editor that is changing what you enter. Make sure that what you want in the file is what is actually in the file. Using FTP to upload a php file should ensure this.

Answer 4

Your Chrome is lying to you.

Your PHP source file is <?php echo 'test'; ?>. Because PHP is not executed, this file is sent to the browser. If the browser should interpret this text, it will stumble upon the <? ?> marks. They have a meaning - they are "XML processing instructions", and the text after the opening angle defines the target.

Obviously the browser does not know about a target named "PHP", so this text is ignored.

And then the element inspector tries to display the DOM and is lying about the original source code, because he is working on the PARSED source - which is great because you usually want to know on which data the browser acts, and this includes how the browser interpreted your source.

But if you make any error, the browser will try to fix it, and the fix is included in the element inspector.

Obviously the fix for an unknown XML processing instruction is to disable it by commenting it out.

Answer 5

If you are placing your code outside the standard directories (development scenario, in my case) you should check in your /etc/apache2/mod-enabled or /etc/apache2/mod-available in the php5.conf (for ubuntu) and comment the lines that the comment indicates:

# To re-enable PHP in user directories comment the following lines
# (from <IfModule ...> to </IfModule>.) Do NOT set it to On as it
# prevents .htaccess files from disabling it.
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
    <Directory /home/*/public_html>
        php_admin_value engine Off
    </Directory>
</IfModule>

Answer 6

It seems you have to instruct apache explicitly to handle html files as php files, I was having the same problem but renaming the file to .php solved the issue for me.