mod_php和Zend Engine

Question

I'm trying to really understand the different of jobs between mod_php and the Zend Engine. Reading some post on stackoverflow i find an interesting answer about what is mod_php

Basically, when loading mod_php as an Apache module, it allows Apache to interpret PHP files (those are interpreted by mod_php).

So php isn't interepreted by the zend engine but is interpreted by mod_php?
I think I don't really understand what is meaning and what is the jobs of zend engine and the jobs of mod_php (fastcgi and so on...) and how the zend engine and mod_php communicate.
Could someone explain this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

mod_php is an Apache module. It is one of the many ways of running PHP (the Zend Engine).

You can also run PHP directly on the command line, or another very popular way is using PHP-FPM and Nginx/Apache.

Basically, PHP (the Zend Engine) is something that is often used along side a web server (Apache, Nginx) and mod_php is one of the ways of doing that, but perhaps not the best.