Quickly serve a PHP project. Do you want a server:

• That is perfectly suited for your PHP project with a single index file that should receive all requests, except those for static resources.
• That quickly starts and stops when you request it.
• That runs in any directory right away.
• That handles multiple requests in parallel.
• That can have multiple instances running at the same time.

Then this is what you want. This is a quick python script that allows you to run a server using nginx and php-fpm in any server. This script will create some temporary configuration for nginx and php-pfm and then run these services using these configuration files. When you're done developing you just press Ctrl + C and the script stops the server and removes all temporary files, leaving you with a nice and clean filesystem.

This script requires recent versions of nginx and php-fpm. By default the script requires these commands to be available on the PATH for the user you're executing the script under.

• Windows: I don't think this is going to work for you.
• Mac OS: You can use macports to get nginx and a more recent version of php-fpm. Note that macports installs php-fpm for php 5.4 as a binary with the name php-fpm54. The php-fpm you'll find installed is the one provided with Mac OS. Either edit the script, provide a command line parameter every time you're using the script or create a symlink that precedes the one Mac OS provides.
• Linux: nginx and php-fpm are available in most recent distributions their package managers. Just make sure nginx and php-fpm are available on the PATH and you should be good to go.

Want to get some help? USe --help on the script to see what options are available. Some examples:

# Run the script in the current directory using app.php as the index
quickserve.py app.php

# Change the root folder to public and use index.php (default) as the index
quickserve.py -r ./public

# Determine the root and index by giving a path
quickserve.py -b ~/development/website/public/app.php

# Change the port and interface (only allow from localhost on port 1234)
quickserve.py -i 127.0.0.1 -p 1234

# Use a different php-fpm binary
quickserve.py --php-fpm-bin php-fpm54