[php] Package php5 have no installation candidate (Ubuntu 16.04)

When i try to install php5 in Ubuntu 16.04 by using following code:

sudo apt-get install php5 php5-mcrypt

I get following error:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package php5 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'php5' has no installation candidate

I have tried reinstalling but it does not help.

All this error was encountered after I updated my 15.10 Ubuntu to 16.04

sudo apt-get install php7.0-mysql

for php7.0 works well for me

You must use prefix "php5.6-" instead of "php5-" as in ubuntu 14.04 and olders:

sudo apt-get install php5.6 php5.6-mcrypt

Currently, I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Me too was facing same problem while Fetching the Postgress Database values using Php so i resolved it by using the below commands.

Mine PHP version is 7.0, so i tried the below command.

apt-get install php-pgsql

Remember to restart Apache.

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

This worked for me.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^ -y

;)

If you just want to install PHP no matter what version it is, try PHP7

sudo apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-mcrypt

I recently had this issue as well and solved it using the following command:

sudo apt install php7.2-cli

php is now installed. I'm using Ubuntu 18.04.