php-sweph

Swiss Epehemeris license

Please pay attention and review license terms and conditions at the official AstroDienst page. I do not have a valid license, so no Swiss Ephemeris code/data files are redistributed here - just mere links to official distribution site.

Preface

Initially this was a project to port php-sweph to PHP7. I've somehow managed to craft the working code back in the 2017, but had little motivation to put the code open. Maybe now I'm rather late with this, but as proverb says better late than never.

Build

Preparation part

Spin up a fresh AlmaLinux8 VM with minimal s/w set, then enter commands as follows:

dnf install -y epel-release 
dnf install -y https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm
dnf module reset php
dnf module install -y php:remi-7.4
dnf install -y php74-php-devel php-devel git

Now your VM can build extensions for PHP and other C sources.

Swiss Ephemeris part

OK, next one:

mkdir /opt/sweph

Download swe_unix_src_<version>.tar.gz from AstroDienst site, then put to /opt/sweph dir of VM filesystem.

tar xvfz swe_unix_src_<version>.tar.gz
cd /opt/sweph/src
make libswe.a libswe.so
ln -s /opt/sweph/src /usr/src/sweph
ln -s /opt/sweph/src/libswe.so /usr/lib64/libswe.so

Now you have a working copy of Swiss Ephemeris library.

Extension part

git clone https://github.com/tnt4brain/php-sweph.git
cd php-sweph
phpize
./configure
make install

Configure PHP to load the extension

echo "extension=sweph" > /etc/php.d/40-sweph.ini
php -i | grep sweph

Usage note

You can add custom ephemerides search path with 'SE_EPHE_PATH' environment variable - I guess you have to add it to PHP environment.

Sources

GitHub repo - the code source I've updated to support PHP7 back in 2017

Original GitHub repo which has evolved and improved since then, now with perfect PHP7 support