This is a really noob question... How do I use PHP libraries downloaded from GitHub? I've never experienced using libraries (even with the use of Composer). Where do I put the library folder? Are there any other steps I need to take to make the library work?
I'm trying to use PHPSpreadsheet to read and write Excel files; in their GitHub documentation, it's only about using the library in code.
I've tried searching for ways on how to use libraries without the use of Composer but they were all really specific and didn't apply to my situation. There were answers about using libraries on a server and about using libraries on Wordpress.
I just need to use the library for my thesis which will just be on one PC, no servers or anything.
A computer is a computer - PHP doesn't care whether it's a server or not. Believe it or not, every answer you saw did, indeed apply to your situation. PHP is a tool - a hammer - and you can use it to drive in nails or put dents in a fender with equal efficiency.
Put the library folder anywhere you like - literally
Then, at the top of every .php file that needs to use the library, simply add:
require '../relative/path/to/library/file.php'
or
require '/absolute/path/to/library/file.php'
It's that easy ... welcome to the wonderful world of code - where EVERY decision you make will come back to bite you on the a** ;)
Related
If I would like to distribute PHP application with installer(package system of OS) how should I proceed? I don't want PHP files to be there, just working application, so when I type 'app' into console, it ends up being launching application, without need to install PHP on system(no php installation on host required). I would also like the application to have patch-able byte-code, so it's in parts, loaded when needed and only part needs to be replaced on update.
What I would do now is following:
->Compile PHP with extensions for specific platform.
->Make binary application which launches '/full/php app' when app is launched.
->Pack it in installer in a way, that there would be binary added to path when added, launching specific installation of PHP which is alongside the app with argument of start point->App would be running.
Problem is:
Maybe I don't want my PHP files to be exposed(in application, there will be available source anyway) is there some ready made stuff to do this? Is there some better way than I proposed?
Alternative: Modifying OP Cache to work with "packing" application to deliver byte codes to modified OP Cache which just reads the cache.
My suggestion would be a tiny tool I just finished, for almost exactly the same problem. (Oh yes I tried all the others but they're old and rusty, sometimes they're stuck with 4.x syntax, have no support, have no proper documentation, etc)
So here's RapidEXE:
http://deneskellner.com/sw/rapidexe
In the classical way, it's not a really-real compiler, just a glorified packer, but does exactly what you need: the output exe will be standalone, carrying everything with it and transparently building an ad-hoc runtime environment. Don't worry, it all happens very fast.
It uses PHP 7.2 / Win64 by default but has 5.x too, for XP compatibility.
It's freeware, obviously. (MIT License.)
(Just telling this because I don't want anyone to think I'm advertising or something. I just took a few minutes to read the guidelines about own-product answers and I'm trying to stay within the Code of the Jedi here.)
However...
I would also like the application to have patch-able byte-code, so it's in parts, loaded when needed and only part needs to be replaced on update.
It's easier to recompile the exe. You can extract the payload pieces of course but the source pack is one big zip; there seems to be no real advantage of handling it separately. Recompiling a project is just one command.
Maybe I don't want my PHP files to be exposed(in application, there will be available source anyway)
In this case, the exe contains your source compressed but eventually they get extracted into a temp folder. They're deleted immediately after run but, well, this is no protection whatsoever. Obfuscation seems to be the only viable option.
If something goes wrong, feel free to comment or drop me a line on developer-at-deneskellner-dot-com. (I mean, I just finished it, it's brand new, it may misbehave so consider it something like a beta for now.)
Happy compiling!
PHP doesn't do that natively, but here are a few ideas:
Self-extracting archive
Many archival programs allow you to create a self-extracting archive and some even allow to run a program after extraction. Configure it so that it extracts php.exe and all your code to a temp folder and then runs ir from there; deleting after the script has complete.
Transpilers/compilers
There's the old HPHC which translates PHP code to C++, and its wikipedia age also contains links to other, similar projects. Perhaps you can take advantage of those.
Modified PHP
PHP itself is opensource. You should be able to modify it withot too much difficulty to take the source code from another location, like some resource compiled directly inside the php.exe.
Use Zend Guard tool that compiles and converts the plain-text PHP scripts into a platform-independent binary format known as a 'Zend Intermediate Code' file. These encoded binary files can then be distributed instead of the plain text PHP. Zend Guard loaders are available for Windows and Linux platform that enables PHP to run the scripts encoded by Zend Guard.
Refer to http://www.zend.com/en/products/zend-guard
I would like to add another answer for anyone who might be Googling for answers.
Peach Pie compiler/runtime
There is an alternative method to run (and build apps from) .php source codes, without using the standard php.exe runtime. The solution is based on C#/.NET and is actually able to compile php source files to .NET bytecode.
This allows you to distribute your program without exposing its source code.
You can learn more about the project at:
https://www.peachpie.io/
You've got 3 overlapping questions.
1. Can I create a stand-alone executable from a PHP application?
Answered in this question. TL;DR: yes, but it's tricky, and many of the tools you might use are semi-abandoned.
2. Can I package my executable for distribution on client machines?
Yes, though it depends on how you answer question 1. If you use the .Net compiler, your options are different to the C++ option.
3. Can I protect my source code once I've created the application?
Again, depends on how you answer question 1. Many compilers include an "obfuscator" option which makes it hard to make sense of any information you get from decompiling the app. However, a determined attacker can probably get through that (this is why software piracy is possible).
I've recently inherited a large PHP application with NO objects/modules/namespaces...only a lot of files containing functions.
Of course, there is a LOT of dependencies (and all files and almost always included).
I'm looking for a tool that could analyse the files and generate a dependencies graph. It would then be easier to detect independent files/set of files and re-factor the whole thing.
So far the best solution I've found would be to write a CodeSniffer sniff to detect all functions calls and then use that to generate the graph.
It seems something useful for other, so I'm sure tools already exists for it.
What would you recommend ?
I think that the best solution is use a doc generat + grapviz, PHPDocumentor looks to have a Grapviz extension at https://github.com/phpDocumentor/GraphViz
This is a example made with PHPDocumentor:
http://demo.phpdoc.org/Clean/graphs/classes.svg
Too you can use a hierarchical profiler like xhprof (https://github.com/facebook/xhprof), this can draw a tree of all call to functions from a execution.
A example form xhprof draw done by Graphviz
I could recommend a lightweight project I wrote few days ago. Basically I had a 300+ files PHP project and I wanted to detect what files do these files require/include and vice-versa. Moreover, I wanted to check for each individual file what files does this file requires/includes (directly or indirectly, ie. via file inheritance) and vice-versa: what are the files that include this particular file. For any combination of these I wanted an interactive dependency graph (base on file inclusion and not on class/function calls/usage).
Check out the project's sandbox and its source code.
Note that the whole thing was written in only 2 days so don't judge it
too harsh. What's important is that it's doing its job!
One of the neater features of Dropbox is that it keeps previous versions of the files you upload.
Part of our site is a similar file repository (customers upload their files to store them offsite), and we'd like to implement a similar feature.
How does Dropbox manage revisions? Do they use some off the shelve revision software that autocommits each file? Or did they just roll their own solution?
I'm hoping there's a 3rd party library I can use for this as it's not the sort of thing we have time to do from scratch ourselves.
Thanks for any help you guys can provide!
More than likely they used a custom solution. Possible methods you can look at are storing a separate file on filesystem for each version, store a separate file in the database for each version, or calculate the diff for the revised file and store that.
The third option is the best as it uses the least space.
Take a look at xdiff_file_bdiff(), it calculates a binary diff of two files (The old version and the new version). The xdiff library should give you the tools you need to do this. You could also look at using something like git for version control, just automate the process using PHP. You'd probably want to run some benchmarks to see what solution works the fastest.
I'm in the process of writing some epub creation functionality using php5. Currently I am attempting to use ZipArchive but have run into a couple annoyances with it. First of all, there is no functionality to set the compression level. Second of all, ZipArchive::addFile() seems to fail silently and create a corrupt archive whenever I use it. I have been using file_get_contents() + ZipArchive::addFromString() instead but would prefer to just use the documented function for adding files.
I will not post code samples unless someone would really like to help me debug this issue, but rather I'm wondering if there are any other libraries for creating zip (pkzip) archives in PHP that you would recommend. So far, I have seen PclZip, whose site does not seem to be loading, but not much else. I have also considered using exec() + zip (unix command). This code will only run on this one particular linux box so portability is not an issue.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
PCLZip is pretty good alternative, with zlib as its only dependency, if you can get access to the site. It's probably temporary, it was certainly accessible between Christmas and New Year.
It's also pretty efficient, even in comparison with ZipArchive
EDIT
You say that you've had problems with ZipArchive's addFile() method. Is this in a Windows environment, or on your Linux server? I know that there have been a few buggy releases of the php_zip library on Win32 that can give this problem, although the latest versions seem OK, and I've not encountered the same problem on other platforms (even the WIN64 version).
I'd use exec() and the Unix command. A native-to-the-system way to solve the problem - the unix utils will always be a step or two ahead from their PEAR counterparts.
I was just wondering how I use Ant to build my web applications that I have written in PHP? I've googled around a bit and I have seen that it is possible but there are not any examples of the basic idea or any advanced use for them. Can any of you help me out?
Thanks!
This is definitely possible. If you are looking for a pure php solution phing might be what you want. Also note that there's usually no reasons to build PHP scripts. They should 'just work'.
While Ant itself is written in java, you can use it to build any kind of applications you want. Here's a basic tutorial and a full manual. Beyond that, you need to clarify what is it you want to do to get a more precise answer here.
Update (based on question clarifications):
Copying / moving files / folders is easy via Ant. Look through the "Hello World" tutorial I've linked above and Familiarize yourself with FileSet concept and Copy, Mkdir and Move tasks to get started. Here's another tutorial that shows how to set up a basic build (ignore java-specific stuff like javac/war).
Making changes to the database is an entirely different subject. If you have 'alter' scripts ready, you can use Ant's Exec task to invoke your DB's command-line client to run those scripts (though I probably wouldn't do it in production). If you want to use Ant to track those changes, then you're looking at the wrong tool. Liquibase can be used to do that and it seems to be getting a lot of traction lately. It's quite like Ant in the sense that it's written in Java but can be used in any environment. I'm no PHP expert so I wouldn't know if there's something more PHP-geared available.
We use ant to 'build' php apps. At it's most basic, the ant script just copies the file into the folder on the testing webserver (localhost in my case).
Why do this? well there's not a great deal of point to it, but it is a handy way to avoid putting .svn files into the webserver. If you want to change the location of the webserver you can just build to the new location. You can also do different things according to whether you're on Linux or Windows for example, but I've never used that side of it.
Having tried Phing, Ant and Gradle, I would strongly recommend gradle. Here is a bit of description Choosing tools for PHP application automation