I was actually about to do some coding and then i got distracted with this annoying error on vscode.

I keep getting this error on vscode:

I had been ignoring it, but i thought fine, ill fix it and install php on the server. 

for some reason when installing php on ubuntu with apt it assumes that you also want to install the apache web server???

sudo apt install php

also installs:

apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapache2-mod-php7.4 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
  libaprutil1-ldap libjansson4 liblua5.2-0 libsodium23 linux-image-4.15.0-99-generic linux-modules-4.15.0-99-generic
  php-common php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-json php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline ssl-cert

No.. I just want php thanks.

sudo apt remove php

So you need to install php cgi 1st and then you can install php without it installing the apache server as well. 

sudo apt install php-cgi

and then 

sudo apt install php

now locate the php location

whereis php
php: /usr/bin/php7.4 /usr/bin/php /usr/lib/php /etc/php /usr/share/php7.4-common /usr/share/php7.4-readline /usr/share/php7.4-opcache /usr/share/php7.4-json /usr/share/man/man1/php.1.gz

Now add it to settings json in vscode

Hopefully no more errors finding php.