PHP Questions

sohguanh

Hi I come from the background from C, C++,Visual Basic,Java and Perl and now dabbling in PHP. I got some questions to ask.

Is there a CPAN Perl equivalent for PHP ? That is, a central repository mirror world-wide where PHP coders can upload modules(classes, packages etc) for other ppl to use ?

Reason being recently I was looking to create M$ Excel files using PHP and searching the Net lead me to PHPExcel. It would be ideal if all such good stuff is consolidated at a single place like CPAN Perl so one only look at a single place. Maybe a CPAN PHP ?

I am also looking for a good and fast PHP XML Parser. I want both DOM and Streaming (event trigger kind) of XML Parser. Any recommendation ?
Perl has a mechanism such that to get the maximum performance, they provide a Perl wrapper over the actual C API. Does PHP has equivalent concept ? That is PHP wrapper over the actual C API ?

Of course when we code, we only call the PHP wrappers and not the C API directly.

Usually PHP is associated with Web stuff but I read online PHP can be configured to run as stand-alone like Perl. So does that mean one must re-compile PHP to run in stand-alone mode ? That is, if PHP is compiled to run inside a Web server, it can no longer be used as a stand-alone mode model ?

Thanks.

sohguanh

I don't want to create too many threads so append to same topic.

There are various ways for PHP to call external program. They include the backtick operator, system command, shell_exec command and also popen, fgets, pclose commands. I would like to know the benefits of using each command.

i. From what I read if we use backtick operator or shell_exec command, there is a limit to the output that can be returned to the variable. Somewhere in the region of 100,000 bytes ? After which we may lost some data ?

ii. System command only return the last line of the external command output so no good in this scenario.

iii.
popen(...)
while(fgets(....))
..
pclose(...)

So it seems iii is the best strategy as it attempt to read each line of output from the external command. This avoid the potential problem in i.

Any comments?

sohguanh

I don't want to create too many threads so append to same topic.

Is there a PHP equivalent to JFreeChart ? That is a set of API such that we can create chart like pie chart (2D,3D), histogram etc and save the final output in jpg, bmp, gif, png. Basically a Charting API but in PHP.

Thanks.

halojoy

Like JFreeChart in PHP?

A quick search with google gave:

- PHP/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful PHP tool to create attractive web charts

Libchart – Libchart is a free chart creation PHP library, that is easy to use

http://tutorialblog.org/free-chart-and-graph-solutions/

This blog article lists some different Chart possibilities.
There are also, except for the two wentioned, other AJAX and JQuery applications.
And there are good AJAX and JQuery Libraries especially for use in PHP.

sohguanh

1. Is there a CPAN Perl equivalent for PHP ? That is, a central repository mirror world-wide where PHP coders can upload modules(classes, packages etc) for other ppl to use ?

I just found the CPAN Perl equivalent at PEAR PHP. Are there others ?

Thanks.

halojoy

sohguanh;10946605 wrote:
I just found the CPAN Perl equivalent at PEAR PHP. Are there others ?

Try this google search, uses 2 words: php + cpan
[URL="http://www.google.com/#num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=php+"cpan"+php"]http://www.google.com/#num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=php+"cpan"+php[/URL]

sohguanh

halojoy;10946607 wrote:
Try this google search, uses 2 words: php + cpan
[URL="http://www.google.com/#num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=php+"cpan"+php"]http://www.google.com/#num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=php+"cpan"+php[/URL]

Ok. Thanks. It seems the PHP community are pretty fragmented as compared to Perl. For Perl developers whenever we want some modules the place to look out for is CPAN Perl. It is de-facto standard. This help to save a lot of time for Perl developers.

With PHP modules so fragmented, I guess everytime I need some PHP modules I got to Google search all over again. This is very time consuming. I wonder if there are any PHP authority want to do something like CPAN Perl for PHP?

One reason I can think of is the PHP Zend Engine is from a Israeli company and obviously they think too much Open Source could be a threat to them ? Afterall their Zend engine run a lot of PHP code nowadays albeit the Zend engine cost some monies compared to Perl.

My few cents worth of opinion. Thanks.

halojoy

It might be of interest to know
that PHP from the very beginning was some Perl script for server side use.

HISTORY.

PHP originally stood for personal home page.[3]

It began in 1994 as a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries written in the C programming language by the Danish/Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf.[5][6] Lerdorf initially created these Personal Home Page Tools to replace a small set of Perl scripts he had been using to maintain his personal homepage. The tools were used to perform tasks such as displaying his résumé and recording how much traffic his page was receiving.[3]

He combined these binaries with his Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI, which had more functionality. PHP/FI included a larger implementation for the C programming language and could communicate with databases, enabling the building of simple, dynamic web applications. Lerdorf released PHP publicly on June 8, 1995, to accelerate bug location and improve the code.[7] This release was named PHP version 2 and already had the basic functionality that PHP has today. This included Perl-like variables, form handling, and the ability to embed HTML. The syntax was similar to Perl but was more limited, simpler, and less consistent.[3]

Web Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
http://www.lerdorf.com/
.... the personal homepage of Rasmus Lerdorf from Denmark.
He who happend to start the whole PHP (Personal Home Page) Thing.
He know is employed by www.YAHOO.com

/halojoy

sohguanh

sohguanh;10946605 wrote:
I just found the CPAN Perl equivalent at PEAR PHP. Are there others ?

Thanks.

From PEAR I found PECL and now there are two camps!!! So confusing! I surf and find PEAR has the potential to be the CPAN PHP to CPAN Perl but due to historical reasons we should give them time to mature.

CPAN Perl year 1995
PECL year 2001
PEAR year 2003

It is quite unfair of us to expect PECL, PEAR to achieve the same kind of breath and depth as CPAN Perl. But the first step I would think of is for PECL and PEAR to merge as one entity isn' it ?

Btw I just found XML_Parser at PEAR. It is great. It uses Expat libraries which some Perl modules also uses too.

Thanks.

bradgrafelman

sohguanh wrote:
4. Usually PHP is associated with Web stuff but I read online PHP can be configured to run as stand-alone like Perl. So does that mean one must re-compile PHP to run in stand-alone mode ? That is, if PHP is compiled to run inside a Web server, it can no longer be used as a stand-alone mode model ?

Nope, no recompiling necessary. The CLI is always compiled and installed by default, even if you use a --with-apxs compile flag to compile PHP as an Apache module.

Assuming that the --prefix option is within your PATH variable, you should be able to do "php my_console_script.php" to run PHP from a console. You could even create some sort of PHP daemon, I suppose, by forking the PHP process into the background.

EDIT: My entire post is based on the fact that you're talking about some sort of *nix platform. Most of it translates into the Windows platform as well, though.

sohguanh

bradgrafelman;10946655 wrote:
Nope, no recompiling necessary. The CLI is always compiled and installed by default, even if you use a --with-apxs compile flag to compile PHP as an Apache module.

Assuming that the --prefix option is within your PATH variable, you should be able to do "php my_console_script.php" to run PHP from a console. You could even create some sort of PHP daemon, I suppose, by forking the PHP process into the background.

EDIT: My entire post is based on the fact that you're talking about some sort of *nix platform. Most of it translates into the Windows platform as well, though.

Thanks a lot! It is indeed already there all along. Why didn't I do a simple Hello World to test, so careless of me :bemused:

I await replies to Thread#2 and below.

Perl has a mechanism such that to get the maximum performance, they provide a Perl wrapper over the actual C API. Does PHP has equivalent concept ? That is PHP wrapper over the actual C API ?

Of course when we code, we only call the PHP wrappers and not the C API directly.

What I am say for above is are there PHP API for us to use PHP code to call the actual C API underlying ?

Thanks.

bradgrafelman

In regards to the C API... can you give an example of what you're talking about?

sohguanh

bradgrafelman;10946928 wrote:
In regards to the C API... can you give an example of what you're talking about?

Ok please see http://perldoc.perl.org/perlxs.html

Start extracted from URL
XS is an interface description file format used to create an extension interface between Perl and C code (or a C library) which one wishes to use with Perl. The XS interface is combined with the library to create a new library which can then be either dynamically loaded or statically linked into perl. The XS interface description is written in the XS language and is the core component of the Perl extension interface.
End extracted from URL

Basically a way for Perl developers to let Perl code interface with the C API. Likewise are there a PHP XS equivalent ? I hope I am clear on what I want.

Thanks.