Serverlet/JavaBean Support??

Anon

I am a current PHP developer who is in the planning stages of a very large web project. I am comparing PHP to The java serverlet/JavaBean model.

The object support of JavaBeans is very compelling. The major downside I see is slower development time.

Is there a way to access Java "Objects", like JavaBeans, or Serverlets, using PHP? There will be more than one frontend on the same backend, so objects for accessing the backend data (for a non-php interface) would be needed.

One reason Java is a major contender is lack of DB2/400 support from PHP. Frankly, ODBC on Linux to DB2/400 isn't really a good choice.

-Pete

Anon

Serverlet is not Java. The Servlet API is, however, which is what you are talking about.

Anon

Hi Peter,

There is indeed support for Java as of PHP4.

Grab the source code and take a look at the implementation and examples (in ./ext/java under wherever you installed the source).

Anon

Yes, it is possible to do what you ask. I have been experimenting with PHP/JavaBeans recently, but have nothing yet in production. (We are currently in the planning stages of our next major project.)

As far as I can tell, my "seat of the pants" estimation is that the JavaBean use does not slow down the page load very much. The loss of execution speed, if there is one, is more than worth the benifits of the technology, at least in my case.

Look in the ext/java dir of the PHP tgz, for the readme, and a couple examples. Be sure to use the latest version of PHP, as this is a bleeding edge extension. The most recent version has a couple (poor) examples, where the former version I had just had basic explainations of the function.

I was able to get my version working using the IBM 1.1.8 JDK, which is rumored to be the fastest. I tried using a more up to date version of the JDK, and was unable to get it to work.

PHP and JavaBeans may soon change the way many large PHP projects are developed. All the advantages of JSP/JavaBeans, without the disadvantages of JSP.

Anyway, I've babled enough for now. I would be more than happy to provide more help, or examples if anyone needs them. I will soon be experimenting with PHP->JavaBeans->IBM AS/400, which has been next to impossible to do access with PHP in the past.

-Pete

Anon

Ken'ichi,

In addition to PHP's Java feature, there is also a PHP servlet feature which has much lower overhead than just using the Java feature since there is no starting of JVM's by PHP in the servlet case.

Here's a link to another post I just put out that explains this in more detail:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=1&id=107031&thread=106226

BTW, both these features are built into PHP as of PHP version 4 (we're now on the verge of PHP4.0.4). Not sure if that's what you meant by this extension being in the production stage. If so, then the answer is yes.

Alex

Anon

Ken'ichi wrote:

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the pointer. Very interesting.
Although I tried to rebuild latest php source, I have one question.

Q. where's "phpsrvlt.jar"?

After I successfully did ./configure --with-java=/path/... --with-servlet
Then % make fails.

I found I need to add phpsrvlt.jar into CLASSPATH, but there seems no file.
Any suggestion?

Actually, phpsrvlt.jar is what gets produced out of the --with-servlet step. What it's actually missing is the java servlet extension (also known as JSDK) which is not part of the standard JDK distribution but can be downloaded separately from Sun (and may also be part of J2EE but of that I'm not certain). The JSDK also contains its own servlet runner but if you already have your own java webserver (such as Tomcat) then it should already contain the JSDK within it. Thus, for Tomcat, you'll need to add <tomcat>/lib/servlet.jar to your CLASSPATH prior to doing the above configure step (or use --with-servlet=<tomcat>/lib/servlet.jar). Note that this may be different for your java webserver. In short, you need to figure out which of the JARs or directories that came with your webserver contains the javax.servlet.* packages and make sure it is visible in the CLASSPATH during the configure step.

Alex

Anon

Ken'ichi,

First off, I don't think you should be doing --with-apxs and --with-servlet in the same configure step. If you're planning to use PHP as a servlet then you don't want to also use the apache module. However, I suppose you could opt to have a separate extension to use for each of these in case you want apache to handle some of the PHP requests and tomcat to handle others.

At any rate, I've seen other references in the mailing lists of people doing --with-servlet=<path to servlet.jar> but I've never tried it myself. I usually set up my environment to include all the JDK and CLASSPATH settings (I just run a little shell script to set it all up) and then simply run --with-servlet --with-java. Try that and see if it works better for you.

Alex

Anon

Just write this, then It works!

./configure --with-mysql --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs --wit
h-servlet=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-3.2/ --with-java=/usr/local/jdk1.2.2