Setting a PHP script as a Windows Service

You can run php on command line by giving different parameters and also the script-file as parameter. If you add the whole line you need into the service configuration it should run. So you are also able to try the device before creating the service. If the php-script is outside your web-route perhaps you should add the folder to the PATH-Variable of windows.

Maybe the Resource Kit Tools (specifically srvany.exe) can help you here. MSDN: How To Create A User-Defined Service and possibly this hint for 2008 Server should help you setup any executable as a service. (I've successfully used this on Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server and on Windows XP Professional [other Resource Kit, though])

You'd create a bat containing php your-script.php, wrap that with srvany.exe and voila, the script is started once the machine loads the services.

srvany.exe should handle those start/stop/restart calls you'd expect a daemon to execute. It would load your executable on start, kill the process on stop, do both on restart. So you don't have to worry about this part. You might want to check if a register_shutdown_function() can help identify when your service process is killed.

You can even define dependencies to other services (say some database or some such).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\THENAMEOFYOURSERVICE]
"DependOnService"="DEPENDONTHIS"

replace THENAMEOFYOURSERVICE with the name you gave your service and DEPENDONTHIS with the name of the service to depend on (say "Postgres9.0" or something). Save that file to dependency.reg and load it with regedit /s dependency.reg. (Or doubleclick it in explorer…)

We used FireDaemon for this task, it doesn't require wrapper scripts etc. Unfortunately it's not freeware.