PHP as standalone executables?

[Tea_J]

@

God man, dont you ever sleep?!! heheheh..

well, thanks for the input, but, I'm not worried about the PHP-GUI and stuff.. you see, my case is a bit different... I dont need a gui, since, I MAKE MY OWN GUI.. So i dont think GTK was the one im looking for.

Here's my thing..Example.

I have a Flash Projecter (myapp.exe)... it has an input field with the variable name, and a button that does a POST method to a php file..

Then i have a php file that saves the name to a database and echo's back :
echo "&result=ok&";

Basically, you enter your name in the Flash GUI, hit the button and Flash waits for the response of the php file...

Now, normally, I'd have an apache server with php installed just for the above to work...and my Flash GUI would send to:

loadVariables("http://localhost/scripts/record.php",this,"POST");

So i was hoping that there's something out there that would make my life easier by not requring a whole server and php installation for every Flash Program i deploy.

I hope im clear somehow

tea

PS
I dont think GTK is meant for the above huh? this GTK thing is a GUI in itself- as i understood it..

[LordShryku]

Ok, then in your case, this blander may be just what you need. It just takes a regular php script that you made, and compiles an exe along with the php.exe/ini files it needs. You should be able to pass any variables you need to it. My only real suggestion would be to try it out. See what you can get going 🙂

And yeah, I sleep. Sometimes. 😃

[Tea_J]

@

Yeah, i initially planned to test it out myself.. however, since i just heard about it the first time, i was hoping people here could tell me there are better things i dont know of yet.. But i guess that isnt the case.. will try this now.. ill letcha know what turns up.. thanks dude!!!

PS
lolz on your sleeping habits. 🙂

Tea

[Tea_J]

hate to bother you again LordShryku but, it seems that this blender thing really does make the script call the php interpreter and stuff..

what i wana know now is, since the blender bundles with:

php4ts.dll
mmcache.dll
blender.ini

would it be possible to use the updated versions of the above files? like take the dll's from the new php5 (since blender works only with PHP4.3 and below...

And regards to the blender ini, it seems to be just the original php.ini with a new name..

whatcha tink bud?

Tea

[LordShryku]

blender.ini looks like nothing more than a changed version of php.ini, so make sure to change that as well. I'm going to play with this a bit more tomorrow. I want to see how much actual client control I can build into it...

[Tea_J]

cool.. it'd be great if we could upgrade the versions by simply replacing these files. thanks yo..

tea

[statrat]

I've used PriadoBlender. You guys are right that it just bundles the php.exe with your script. As far as I can tell, It uses the Turck-MMcache encoder to do this, which means the mmcache.dll needs to be distributed with the .exe.

There used to be a similar project to Priado, but it got discontinued. There is also Alan Knowles work, but that is certainly not easy to use. Priado is still active, and is supposed to have a new release soon.

and yes, you can create a PHP-GTK application with priado. Here's one you can download and tryout, which I created for my brother's work:
http://www.josheli.com/john/airparts.zip
This particular app uses embedded sqlite for a database. Priado does not work with PHP5 (which has Sqlite by default), so i had to include the php_sqlite.dll.

Also, to use PHP-GTK, you need to include all the libraries and .dll files that it requires.

So my simple application directory ended up at around 9.5 mb total.

What i did, was to develop normally with includes and requires and the like, then wrote a "pre-processor" script to "compile" my .php scripts into one big .php script, which was then "compiled" with priadoblender. All the pre-processor did was scan files for includes, and when it found them, include that code where the "include" is. It also removed comments/whitespace and tried to search and remove unused functions.
There are several scripts already out there that will do this. Here's one:
http://alex.kazik.de/twister.html

The priado website is a bit misleading when it says the .exe is "standalone", because it requires some supporting .dlls and of course the .ini file.

Another drawback is that if I distribute 5 Priado/PHP-GTK "executable" applications, then users will have 5 of everything (mmcache.dll, *gtk.dll, php_sqlite.dll, etc.), unless you can figure out a way to test the users PC for already installed libraries and use those.

oh, one other thing... i've also combined priado with Nanoweb, a pure PHP standalone webserver to create "distributed desktop web applications".

hth.

[statrat]

i also forgot to mention that PHP-GTK required different files on different Windows OSes. XP didn't require some .dlls, while 2000 did require them, and vice versa. At least that was my experience. Also, iconv.dll seemed to be necessary/unnecessary depending on OS.
I just had to play around with it and get bug reports from my brother 🙂.

[Tea_J]

statrat

wonderful info dude. thanks a lot...

as for me, i wont be needing php-gtk coz i do my GUI in Flash.. i've been doing so for a while now.. my only hindrance is, the "bundling" of apache server and php with my app.. (is that even legal?)

I was hoping for something like priado so that i my Flash Based applications will be more independent from the typical webserver setup..

Also, i just figured out (and you've said it in a way) that priado compiled scripts can not work includes() properly, so that means, everything must be in one script..

Now, another thing is, i though sending variables to the exe will be the same as sending to php (GET or POST) ... but it turned out to be different. i was told there's a way to send variables via command line style.. (is it hard??)

Another thing is, most of my apps are networkable, and sometimes they open internet explorer windows specially for printing reports.. soooo.. bottom line is, i dont thin priado can work for me.. i guess i really need a webserver style setup.... plus, that's where im really familiar with....

so, here goes another post........

🙂

thanks for all your help!!!!

Tea

[Weedpacket]

Of course, is a PHP executable needing to mmcache.dll etc. to run, really any different from a VB or MSVC executable needing its own support dlls?

[statrat]

the "bundling" of apache server

there are plenty of other very small standalone webservers.

Now, another thing is, i though sending variables to the exe will be the same as sending to php (GET or POST) ... but it turned out to be different. i was told there's a way to send variables via command line style.. (is it hard??)

not hard it all. just look at the docs on the PHP CLI. basically, any variable you send on the command line is available in the $argv array.

Another thing is, most of my apps are networkable, and sometimes they open internet explorer windows specially for printing reports.. soooo.. bottom line is, i dont thin priado can work for me.. i guess i really need a webserver style setup.... plus, that's where im really familiar with....

if you're running it on windows, you can use the php COM extension to interact with IE. there are also other small standalone browsers out there you could use. most of them have some command line interface that you can manipulate them through.
like i said before, i'm currently working on an application that uses Priado, nanoweb php webserver, cUrl extension for networking, and a standalone browser as the gui interface.

just get creative dude.

weed, i think the difference is that there's usually only one msvcrt.dll, whereas there would be as many mmcache.dlls as you had priado applications. unless, again, you could figure out an install routine to locate all php and GTK installations on the given PC.

[bliss322]

my only hindrance is, the "bundling" of apache server and php with my app.. (is that even legal?)

one way of making the bundling simpler would be to use something like phpdev . it bundles php, apache, and mysql into a single executable.http://www.firepages.com.au/

[Tea_J]

well yeah, i used to use FoxServ to do that, but darn it installs perl, phython, etc! hehe. i just needed php/apache/mysql..

I understand there are some bundles that are just the three, but again, the idea of having a whole apache webserver installed for a simple membership management software is kinda over-kill - isnt it?

Tea