Installation

php-opcua/opcua-client is distributed through Packagist. Its only runtime requirement is ext-openssl, which is bundled with every mainstream PHP distribution.

Requirements

• PHP ≥ 8.2 (tested against 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5)
• ext-openssl — used for certificate parsing, signing, hashing, AES, and ECDH key agreement
• Operating system — Linux, macOS, and Windows. CI runs the unit suite on all three; integration tests run on Linux (the OPC UA test servers ship as Docker images)

Install

composer require php-opcua/opcua-client

That is the only step. There is no service provider, no facade registration, no PHP configuration to edit.

Verify

<?php

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use PhpOpcua\Client\ClientBuilder;

$client = ClientBuilder::create()->connect('opc.tcp://localhost:4840');

echo $client->getServerProductName() . "\n";

$client->disconnect();

If the script prints the server product name (something like UaServerCpp or open62541 OPC UA Server), the install is complete and the network path to the server is open. The endpoint opc.tcp://localhost:4840 is the OPC UA convention — port 4840 is IANA-assigned, and opc.tcp is the binary scheme.

No server handy?

Pull one of the OPC UA reference servers used by this library's integration suite:

docker run --rm -d \
  --name opcua-test \
  -p 4840:4840 \
  open62541/open62541:latest

# uanetstandard-test-suite ships a docker-compose stack on
# ports 4840 / 4841 / 4842 / … each covering a security policy variant.
git clone https://github.com/php-opcua/uanetstandard-test-suite.git
cd uanetstandard-test-suite
docker compose up -d

Both expose an unsecured endpoint on opc.tcp://localhost:4840. Reach for uanetstandard-test-suite when you also need secured endpoints, username/password servers, or the ECC variants.

Optional dependencies

The library is zero-runtime-dependency beyond ext-openssl. The following PSR contracts are interfaces only — you supply the implementation when you want the feature, and otherwise pay nothing:

Wire them on the builder; see Observability · Logging, Observability · Events, and Observability · Caching.