Running Google App Engine PHP on Windows - php

Question

I keep getting Syntax Error: unexpected character after line continuation character when I try to start the localhost server with the following command:
google_appengine\dev_appserver.py --php_executable_path="C:\Computer Science\PHP\php\php-cgi.exe" "C:\Computer Science\PHP\helloworld"
What's wrong?
My app.yaml:
application: helloworld
version: 1
runtime: php
api_version: 1
handlers:
- url: /.*
script: helloworld.php
My helloworld.py
<?php
echo 'Hello, World!';
?>
My directories
/PHP
/php
/php-cgi.exe
/helloworld
/google_appengine
Edit:
I have ran my app using the google app engine launcher, with php sdk and an extra command line flag in the launch settings:
--php_executable_path=C:\Computer Science\PHP\php\php-cgi.exe. The server crashed.

Answer 1

user2481064 use the windows CMD, make sure you're in the same path as your google app engine sdk, i basically put my GAE SDK and application in the same path. Here it is:
Open your windows cmd, make sure you're in the same directory as your sdk.
Type: "google_appengine/dev_appserver.py" --port=9999 --php_executable_path="fullpath\php-cgi.exe" "helloworld/"
If you have another local server like xampp or wamp,make sure you use the --port command to select another listening port as shown above.
4.Press enter and you should have your helloworld script working.
Good luck :)

Answer 2

I too got stuck with this or the other error "SyntaxError: can't assign to operator". Things got better when I stoppped using the Python shell but use the Windows cmd shell.
For my environment, the command I arrive at is
"google_appengine\dev_appserver.py" --php_executable_path="\BitNami\rubystack-1.9.3-10\php\php-cgi.exe" "helloworld/"
(The direction of some of the slashes can be important if you later use parts of the command for separate investigation/diagnose in Windows.) Wow the engine starts despite various errors. At the webbrowser, I was able to see the localhost equivalent of the dashboard at localhost:8000/instances (force-redirected from localhost:8000) BUT the app itself at localhost:8080 (that's 8080) just shows
' "BitNami/rubystack-1.9.3-10/apache2/cgi-bin/php-cgi.exe -v" returned an error [-1072365564] '
Separately running
BitNami\rubystack-1.9.3-10\apache2\cgi-bin\php-cgi.exe -v
reports my version of PHP is 5.4.15. I am not sure if installing a an additional clean PHP will help. Or perhaps I should move on & push the app.