PHP Error When Trying To Install Invision Power Board On Xampp

Question

When trying to install the latest Invision Power Board on my Xampp Apache server, I get this error:

Fatal error: Cannot make static method XMLReader::open() non static in class IPS\Xml\_XMLReader in D:\xampp\htdocs\PATH_TO_IPS_INSTALL\system\Xml\XMLReader.php on line 34

This is an excerpt from the extensions section of my PHP.ini

extension=bz2
extension=curl
extension=ffi
extension=ftp
extension=fileinfo
extension=gd
extension=gettext
extension=gmp
extension=intl
extension=imap
extension=ldap
extension=mbstring
extension=exif      
extension=mysqli
extension=oci8_12c  
extension=odbc
extension=openssl
extension=pdo_firebird
extension=pdo_mysql
extension=pdo_oci
extension=pdo_odbc
extension=pdo_pgsql
extension=pdo_sqlite
extension=pgsql
extension=shmop

extension=soap
extension=sockets
extension=sodium
extension=sqlite3
extension=tidy
extension=xsl

What can I do to get rid of the error?

Edit: Here's the content starting at line 23

class _XMLReader extends \XMLReader
{
    /**
     * Open a file or URL with XMLReader to read it
     *
     * @param   string  $uri        The URI/path to open
     * @param   string  $encoding   The encoding to use, or NULL
     * @param   int     $options    Bitmask of LIBXML_* constants
     * @return  bool
     * @note    We are disabling network access while loading the content to prevent XXE
     */
    public function open( $uri, $encoding=NULL, $options=0 )
    {
        if( $options === 0 )
        {
            $options = LIBXML_NONET;
        }

        return parent::open( $uri, $encoding, $options );
    }
}

Answer 1

The error appears to be that the child class is trying to overload the static open() method with a non-static open() method. From https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration80.incompatible.php :

XMLReader

XMLReader::open() and XMLReader::xml() are now static methods. They can still be called as instance methods, but inheriting classes need to declare them as static if they override these methods.

Since this is a change in PHP 8.0.0, my guess is that you are using a version of PHP >= 8.0.0 that is incompatible with PowerBoard.

There may be a way to change this piece of code to work on 8.0.0, but my guess is that you will probably encounter more problems other than this one if you are using an unsupported major version.

My advice would be to install whatever Power Board's recommended version of PHP is. I tried to find what that version is on the Power Board site, but a brief look didn't turn up anything.