Switch php version on windows with one command

In this article I will be showing you how to switch between your PHP versions from your terminal without reopening it or using the "view advanced system settings". 

Here are the steps you need:

1. Download & Install cmder
2. Prepare your environment variables
3. Install chocolatey
4. Switch php version from terminal
5. The one command I promised you 👈
6. Issues you might have encounter
7. Final Thoughts

1. Download & Install cmder

Go to https://cmder.app, download and extract the cmder zip where ever suits you, next checkout this posts How cmder made my life easier - part I and part II where you can find details on how to install cmder and configure your own aliases.

2. Prepare your php archive:

We will need for demo purposes to download different versions of php and to do that head to the PHP archive, and download the versions you want, after that extract them in a specific folder ("C:\php-archive" for example).

Once you're done open the "view advanced system settings" and create new variables for your different PHP versions (see image below).

Next, you will add one more variable which you will have the name "current_php" for example, this variable will hold your current php version any time you change it, then reference it inside the path variable (see image below).

3. Install chocolatey

Now that we have everything inside the advanced system settings set up, we will go to chocolatey.org and install chocolatey, which will allow you to update the environment variables.

Open Powershell with admin rights and just follow the instructions to install it the right way, when you're done type choco or choco -v in the terminal to see if you installed it successfully and which version you have.

4. Switch php version from terminal

First, start you terminal with admin rights ( otherwise the next steps won't work !! ), to switch your php version you need to type setx current_php [your_target_php_location] /m where [your_target_php_location] is the absolute path to the php version you want or use one of your php versions your defined here like this setx current_php %php7% /m, now you have switched php to version 7.0 in the path environment, but your terminal doesn't know that, to reload the updates, you need another command which is RefreshEnv.cmd, alias refreshenv, this one comes with chocolatey, chekout this Update-SessionEnvironment.

5. The one command I promised you

Last step is to make a helpful alias to make the process even easier, create an alias like this: setphp=setx current_php %$1% /m $t refreshenv now we can take the previous example ( setx current_php %php7% /m ) and do this setphp php7, php7 will replace the $1 variable inside using the alias which will be equivalent to setx current_php %php7% /m $t refreshenv, then check with php --version.

In the 4th step we talked about starting your terminal with admin rights, but of course you won't remember to do that each time, so to resolve this issue, we will need something extra.

# Parameters:
param( [string]$variableName, [string]$variableValue )

# Check if running as administrator
If (-not ([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal] [Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole] "Administrator")) {
    # Relaunch as administrator with hidden window
    $arguments = "-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File `"$PSCommandPath`" -variableName `"$variableName`" -variableValue `"$variableValue`""
    Start-Process powershell -ArgumentList $arguments -Verb RunAs -WindowStyle Hidden
    exit
}

if ($variableName -and $variableValue) {
    $variableValueContent = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable($variableValue, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)
    if ($variableValueContent) {
        [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable($variableName, $variableValueContent, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)
    } else {
        [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable($variableName, $variableValue, [System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)
    }
    Write-Host "Environment variable '$variableName' set to '$variableValue' at the system level."
} else {
    Write-Host "Please provide both a variable name and value."
}

Save this powershell script somewhere under the name set-env.ps1 and head to your cmder terminal, create an alias like this setvar=powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "/your/path/to/set-env.ps1" $1 $2 && refreshenv, this alias will get 2 parameters and pass them to the powershell script, the paramtere $1 will hold the environment variable name, and $2 will hold the environment variable value, followed by the chocolatey command to refresh everything for your terminal, the script then checks for "administrative privileges" to run the setx command with admin rights.

Since we previously talked about a "current_php" variable, we will be using it for the example, to use our new alias setvar to change the php version even if we didn't start cmder with admin rights, we type setvar current_php php7, or if you like to use the absolute path type setvar current_php your/target/php/location.

6. Issues you might encounter

The issues I found after switching php version, is that the alias keyword and all the supported linux commands no longer works on cmder, and the solution I found for that so far is to add "C:\Cmder\vendor\git-for-windows\usr\bin" and "C:\Cmder\vendor\bin" to the path environment variable.

7. Final Thoughts

Of course you can do something like this, create an alias php8 for /your/path/to/php8/php.exe and run your php code just by typing php8 my-script.php but when it comes to something like composer or anything that relies on your path variable, then you will need something more persistante, hence this article.

One more thing, as you have probably concluded, you can use setx command and chocolatey to update any environment variable you like.