PHP Source Protection

Anon

Hi! I'm working for Application Serivce Provider company and I'm concerned about revealing my source codes to my clients. Are there any tools available to compile it to some protected format aside from Zend Encoder?

Thanks.

L. Yeung

jordan

There's a program called PHPCompiler that I've heard mentioned but have never used. The site seems to be down now -- try doing a search for it on Google. Otherwise, using the Zend Encoder is probably your best bet.

mithril

Here's a link to the compiler:

http://phpuser.com/download/files/dev-tool/phpcompiler/

Few things to keep in mind....

1) It isn't a "compiler", it's an overlay manager. Basically, it tacks the script you're "compiling" onto the end of a copy of php.exe. All related dll's and php.ini must be distributed in addition to the generated exe file

2) I don't think this will work for webpages. It was designed mainly for Win32 shell scripting using PHP and for PHP-GTK apps. Both run as client processes and stand-alone applications on the end-users computer.

3) Version 0.0.2-beta (the latest version available) is limited to how big a file it can append to php.exe. My own experimentation has shown that limit to be approx. 200 lines (or about 8 - 10 kb). Beyond that size and you need to call code in with an include() or require() (ie. it's not appended to the exe and is in plain text source code). This kinda defeats the purpose you're looking to achieve🙂

4) Plot (the developer) seems to have completely dropped off the radar screen, so consider this a dead project with little to no hope of support.

HTH.

Cheers,

Geoff A. Virgo

Anon

What's wrong with the Zend Encoder? Have you found anything spooky?

Anon

if they haven't changed it... the PRICE !!

Anon

Are the prices too high?
The Encodr is meant for people that are making commercial use of PHP, in other words making money out of it.
The current price of the Encoder is $50 per month, which I believe is less then what is charged per one hour of programming...

Anon

Seems like they changed their prices, just had a look at Zend and the developer pack for 600$ a year looks quite cool (though i heard not many good things about the IDE)... I think thats ok, my (slightly outdated) information came from the days they introduced the Zend Encoder and the prices where per License and a License was costly, not to sure, but a webserver license was something around 200$ ... I think the price now is ok (if thats not bound to only one webserver ... but haven't found anything concerning this)

cya Rob

Anon

cool
just another indication that seeing is better then hearing and knowing is better then both.

Anon

ok, now I looked at the email adress 🙂

just another indication that seeing is better then hearing and knowing is better then both.

That's why I used the phrase "if they haven't changed it ...", i think you can remember the tons of posts in the zend forum concerning the prices 🙂 I never went back to zend ... seems like I should have ...

Since I only "heard" that the IDE isn't that good, do you promise that it isn't a waste of time for me to give it a try ? I gave up using "editors" like homesite and dreamweaver and are quite happy with uEdit, but on the other hand I know how nice a IDE can be, if its done right.

Well and your Zend Optimizer is definitly a totaly cool thing, greatly speeds up performance without any problems, nice work!

cya Rob

Anon

Thanks,

If you like the Zend Optimizer you should look at the Zend Cache, it speeds up web sites with an increase of 200% to 400%

Regarding the IDE, its editor is mostly aimed to new users of PHP. The idea is attracting corporate users in order to support the effort of promoting PHP into the large organisations. The debugger may be of interest and the soon-coming new version (2.0, now in Beta) has the debugger as a stand-alone. So I guess you should evaluate it but bare in mind that in several weeks the debugger will be an independant product