Must a webpage end in ".php" in order to run php code?

Question

Does a webpage need to end in ".php" in order to run php code? Is there a way a file ending in ".html" can run php code?

Answer 1

If you're using the Apache web server you can add this line to its configuration:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

it tells the the server that files with a .html extension have to be considered as PHP files. I don't recommend this though, as it forces the PHP engine on every file (even static html pages).

Alternatively you can rewrite (some) .html URLs to their PHP version via mod_rewrite.

Answer 2

No a webpage doesn't need to end in .php to be parsed as PHP.

Yes you can use any extension you want depending on your web server, for example the below code placed in the Apache configuration would parse files with a .htm, .html or .php extension as PHP if running on an Apache server.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html .php

And you may also try this with regular expressions to better match specific criteria:

<FilesMatch "\.(htm|html|php)$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>