Tiny PHP "standalone" server (or framework) for local debug without Apache/Nginx/Lighttpd/etc

Question

There's manage.py runserver in Django or ruby script/server in Ruby on Rails — those familiar with one of those frameworks should already get the idea what I'm looking for. They run tiny "standalone" web server, which is perfectly enough to debug the application locally, without any need for other software (Apache/Nginx/Lighttpd/etc).

I wonder is there any PHP implementation of such tool, or, maybe, some PHP framework has such feature? Surely, I can pack pre-built pre-configured static nginx executable, but this would not be pretty, and certainly not cross-platform. Having standalone debug webserver written in PHP itself will make the package self-contained.

I.e. I'd like to type something like php tools/runserver.php, point browser to http://localhost:8000/ and see the site up and running, ready to debug.

My Google-fu has failed me, but I strongly suspect that there is such project already.

Answer 1

If you just want to debug your application, as of PHP 5.4 there's a built-in web server.

http://docs.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php

Answer 2

Not sure if this is what you're after, though it's actually more like a Tomcat for PHP, and I think (though I'm not sure) it still requires a webserver

Also, nanoweb is a web server written entirely in PHP