Start server in current directory (php/apache)

You can start PHP development server in versions 5.4 and above with:

php -S localhost:8008

I don't think Apache supports anything similar (being itself a web server), but PHP dev server is enough for testing scripts, including serving static contents.

PHP 5.4 added a simple web server to the PHP cli. You can start it with php -S <addr>:<port> it will serve the current directory on address <addr> over port <port>