Last updated on February 2, 2021
PHP’s built-in Web Server designed specifically for development and testing. Since PHP5.4, CLI SAPI comes with a built-in web server. A Built-in web server makes it easy to quickly try out some scripts without needing to configure Apache, Nginx, or other web servers.
Built-in sever strongly recommended for development, testing, and demo purpose. Don’t use as production sever and in public networks.
How to use Built-in Server
You will need to have PHP 5.4 or greater installed to use the built-in server. To verify your version of PHP, issue command php -v in a terminal.
php -v output the version of your current installed PHP.
You can then determine if the server is available in your build by running php -h and looking for the -S and -t options which are specific to the server.
Start built-in Server
The server runs when you pass the -S switch to PHP on the command line. You then supply the server name and port number:
php -S localhost:8080This gives initial output and then provides information about each request 
Changing the host name
You can easily change the hostname from localhost to desired name or project name. To use a custom hostname, you just need to add the new server name into /etc/hosts (or the equivalent for your system) and then start the server with the new name as shown below.
php -S arjunphp:8080Changing the document root directory
By default when you issue sever start command php -S localhost:8080 it will make the current directory as server root. You can change this behavior by specifying the directory path with the -t option while starting to sever.
php -S localhost:8080 -t /var/www/awesomecode