Installation

As of PHP 5 this extension is enabled by default, so simply do not disable it and it'll be available.

Caution

Do not use the PECL version of this extension, as it is unmaintained. Always use the SQLite extension that comes with the PHP sources even while compiling as shared. In this case the sources are in php-src-dir/ext/sqlite and the phpize method of building applies.

Windows users must enable php_sqlite.dll inside of php.ini in order to use these functions. A DLL for this PECL extension is currently unavailable. See also the building on Windows section.

Windows builds must also enable PDO because as of PHP 5.1.0 it depends on it. So, php.ini will end up with something like this:

extension=php_pdo.dll
extension=php_sqlite.dll

On Linux or Unix operating systems, if you build PDO as a shared extension, you must build SQLite as a shared extension using the --with-sqlite=shared configure option.

The PHP 5.0.x series of Windows builds enabled this extension by default, where no DLL file is necessary.

SQLite 3 is supported through PDO SQLite.

Note: Windows installation for unprivileged accounts
On Windows operating systems, unprivileged accounts don't have the TMP environment variable set by default. This will make sqlite create temporary files in the windows directory, which is not desirable. So, you should set the TMP environment variable for the web server or the user account the web server is running under. If Apache is your web server, you can accomplish this via a SetEnv directive in your httpd.conf file. For example:
SetEnv TMP c:/temp
If you are unable to establish this setting at the server level, you can implement the setting in your script:

<?php putenv('TMP=C:/temp'); ?>

The setting must refer to a directory that the web server has permission to create files in and subsequently write to and delete the files it created. Otherwise, you may receive the following error message: malformed database schema - unable to open a temporary database file for storing temporary tables