It has been quite some time since PHP 7 was released, it has major bug fixes, improved and new ways of writing syntax and many other changes you can find here.

So, I decided to write a guide on how to upgrade or install and setup PHP 7.x.x on your Ubuntu based system.

This is a major update, this can break your website or web application, please test your website or web application in a development environment before applying this to your production environment.

Installing

Adding PHP 7 ppa to the local database.

<pre class="wp-block-code">```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php-7.0

Updating the local database

```
sudo apt-get update Installing PHP 7.
```
```

```
Installing PHP 7.
```

```
```
sudo apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-curl php7.0-fpm php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-opcache php7.0-sqlite3 

```
```

Now you can run `PHP -v` in the terminal to check if it has been installed successfully.

### Upgrading from PHP 5 to PHP 7

```
This will purge PHP 5 and remove unwanted dependencies and then clean up the temporary files
```

```
```
sudo apt-get purge php5* && sudo apt-get --purge autoremove && apt-get clean && sudo apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-curl php7.0-fpm php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-opcache php7.0-sqlite3
```
```

Switching [NGINX](https://nginx.org) to PHP 7 from PHP 5

Edit the NGINX config to work with PHP 7 FPM, go the specific `server` config and change the following lines.

**From this**

```
```
location ~ .php$ { try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;include fastcgi_params;
}
```
```

```
```
location ~ .php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
```
```

The only line changed is the `fastcgi_pass.`

`From this`

```
```
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
```
```

**To this**

```
```
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
```
```

Now all the PHP config files are moved to `"/etc/php/7.x"` from `"/etc/php5/".`

So, the path to the php.ini is now located in `/etc/php/7.x/fpm/php.ini`, this means any edits done to the older PHP 5 php.ini need to be re-applied because this is a fresh new in file.

You can restart PHP 7 FPM by entering this command.

```
```
sudo service php7.0-fpm restart 
```
```

Thank you for reading

If you have any question leave a comment below.