How to Activate Pspell in XAMPP for PHP on Windows
Pspell is a useful spell-checking feature provided by PHP through its Pspell extension. However, as the development of the original Pspell library stopped in 2001, the current version utilizes the Aspell library instead. While Aspell is commonly found in Linux distributions, it needs to be manually installed on Windows systems. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up Aspell and enabling the Pspell extension in XAMPP on Windows.
Step 1: Installing Aspell
You can obtain a Windows-compatible version of Aspell from their official website. Although the Windows port might not have recent updates, it still works well on modern Windows versions. Start by downloading and running the 'full installer' to install the library itself. Next, download and install at least one language dictionary from the same source.
Step 2: Placing the Library DLL
Contrary to the PHP documentation's instructions, under XAMPP, you need to ensure that the Aspell DLL is located in Apache's 'bin' directory rather than the system path. Locate the file aspell-15.dll (typically installed at C:\Program Files\Aspell\bin\aspell-15.dll) and copy it to the Apache 'bin' directory (usually found at C:\xampp\apache\bin).
Step 3: Enabling the Pspell Extension
To activate the Pspell extension, navigate to the php.ini file. Depending on your XAMPP version, this file can be located at either C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini or C:\xampp\php\php.ini. Open the file using a text editor, search for the relevant line related to extensions (about halfway down the document), and remove the semicolon preceding:
;extension=php_pspell.dll
If the above line is missing from the file, add the following:
extension=php_pspell.dll
Save the changes, restart Apache through the XAMPP control panel to apply the extension settings.