Is there php7 printer extension/dll? - php

Is there any printer extension for php 7 ? Or can someone provide working solution how to print form php? Or I should use sockets for that ? I tried dll from 5.6 but it doesnt work(

There's a lot of stuff to be done to make its source code available for build into an usable extension besides the common tasks. There are some replacements that can be done and other issues involve finding what to do with no longer used variables and currently invalid syntax. It's a a very outdated, yet usefull extension. I've also tried to do it myself with no success (it builds but it doesn't work).
The easiest way I found and still use in POS (receipt) Printers is just a
system("(echo ".$TextToBePrinted.") >\\\\MachineNameOrPreferablyFixedIp\\PrinterNetworkName");
Every time a new line is needed. Null and newLine characters are indeed possible to send in a single command containing whole custom text, but it's very fastidious. For the same kind of printers there is esc-pos php library available.
Note: No matter if it is a local printer, it has to be shared and better if used as "\\127.0.0.1\PrinterNetworkName". PrinterNetworkName avoids invalid characters as same as in files, so "Generic / Text Only" has to be accessed as "\\127.0.0.1\Generic Text Only".
Simmilar alternatives for common use printers include using dosprn and fwrite or, again,system("echo ...");ing to COMn/LPTn faked or real ports or, if you don't care: create, write and system("print ..."); file having correctly associated extension for the filename you gave.
And for the hardcord-ers, you can build a binary (.exe) to listen to a custom port or calling binary with system(...); directly and print. It's no so hard on c++ using boost. The real hardcore decision would be building a dll extension (By the way: C++ windows api contains simmilar functionality for printing like php does in its extension for managing paper and font size, style and so on).
PHP and dll's with different fisrt two numbers in version won't work. So stop trying to make it happen.

Related

PHP as independent application ( binary, compile, pack, no php on host )

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).

Ghostscript + DOMPDF

I'm generating PDF files using DOMPDF and it generates files with version 1.3 which causes issues in printer. So I tried to use Ghostscript through PHP exec() which works fine but my main PDF parameters like Author, Optimized etc are reset. So how do we set these info through Ghostscript?
Ghostscript doesn't 'reset' the contents of the Info dictionary, these are normally preserved (assuming you are using a reasonably recent version of Ghostscript, you don't actually say which version you are using, nor on which operating system.
If for some reason they are being overwritten, then you can use pdfmark operations to set these contents of the Info dictionary.
I don't know what you mean by 'Optimized'. If you mean 'Linearized' which Distiller often refers to as 'optimized for web viewing' then don't worry about it, its essentially pointless. Effectively this just makes the file bigger.
If you are convinced that you can genuinely use it then you can have Ghostscript produce linearized files too, see Section 6.4

Why can't PHP find long filenames?

inside a Folder I have a file, named
`111-aaaaaa aa aaaa-,._aaaaaaa; aaaaaaaa, aa aaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaa. 03.01.10. 38.38 aaaaa.txt`
when I browse that directory with PHP (or trying to read that file):
var_dump(glob('MyFolder/*'));exit;
It can't find that file. What's problem?
(if I shorten the filename, then it becomes findable. I am on windows)
Windows in particular has a very short file name limit in its original Win32 API. This general problem is discussed here at SO.
At most about 260 characters can be used in an absolute path on Win32. On other platforms there are other limits, but at least 512 characters is to be expected and more is not unheard of.
(For instance, in GNU HURD, there effectively is no limit to file lengths, even though the underlying file system may impose a limit.)
However, Windows actually can have longer filenames (obviously, as you have them on your computer). This works by using a newer Windows API. Unfortunately, standard PHP does not use this API, as far as I know.
There is a modified version of PHP which makes use of this newer Windows API over at Github.
Another benefit from using that newer API is that it also supports Unicode characters in the file names.
try scandir()
it's show list file in array.
Starting with PHP 7.1 long and UTF-8 paths on Windows are supported directly in the core.
Cheers.

File and Folder Attributes - Programming API

I knew that PHP is able to read file content by different ways, for example: fread, file_get_contents, file, readfile, etc.
Currently, I am looking for an API that can read real index of files and folders in specific partition or folder, for example:
drive d:\ in windows contains three folders (folder1, folder2, folder3), and each folder contains some files, we can get these directory structure using PHP (opendir, scandir, readdir, etc) and list them as I want, however, windows saved file and folder names inside hard-disk with their attributes (size, last modified, created on, etc).
How I can read hard-disc using PHP and retrieving all file and folder attributes for a specific path?
for instance, if we consider last modified time we can use (filemtime()) function, but this attribute not saved inside the file, its saved some where else inside hard-drive, other attributes also saved in other location not inside the file.
When windows user copying file from flash-drive to local hard, windows will copy all file and folder attributes and saves them inside local hard drive. When using PHP for copying file, it depends on OS to handle this job, its not native support (as I think) for file and folder operations.
Do you have any idea?
There are many recovery program that uses this technology for reading hard-drive indexes, however, for PHP: I cant find any source for this problem.
Applications if I get correct answer:
I can check if such file securely deleted from my hard-drive? I can create secure delete application using PHP, or clearing hard-drive indexes for a given file.
Your help appreciated.
Problems with the proposition
The attributes of files, such as timestamps, permission flags etc, are stored in the file system (FAT, NTFS, Ext3 etc). As you say some of them can be read using PHPs different file and directory methods, but they all act through the OS file system abstraction and cant have access to block level information on the disk, such as what precise byte on disk stores the archive flag for file X. The whole point of the OS and FS is to abstract away this information from the user/client programs.
As suggested there are external tools, written in c or similar, that does have this access and that you can call from inside PHP. If you want a 'native' PHP way of doing this you'll have to compile a c extension for PHP that exposes these low level functions to you.
I'd say external tools is the way to go if you want to stick with PHP but for the task at hand, as far as we can see from your description, I'd go with another language that has more low level access. Like C or C++. PHP is a high level language for HTML pre processing and as such is a poor choice for low level system programming.
Practical advice
After looking through the PHP documentation and assorted third party libraries:
An of the shelf solution for reading file system information on a file allocation table level doesn't exist for PHP. The lowest level you get is the fstat() function, and that is not very far for what you want.
External tools
No mater exactly what you want to do there is probably a small binary that does it. PHP can be integrated with these programs, as suggested elsewhere, via the exec() function. This is probably the easiest approach for you unless you have serious amounts of time and/or development resources to devote to this problem.
Wrapping a library
There are libraries that solves this problem for you, written in low level languages. An open source library can be wrapped with SWIG to expose it to PHP. This will give you access to the low level methods you need, but it's a non trivial task. These kind of libraries also often require sole access to the device while they work on it, something that is difficult to achieve in most normal operating environments.
Note also that you will probably need a library per file system. Microsofts VFAT extension to FAT12/16/32 requiers a licens to use. So if you want to work with FAT and have files with long names (not 8.3 format) you'll have to fork up some dough to be legit.
Low level implementation
A last middle ground would be to write your own CLI tool that uses an external library to access the low level FS functions. You can then use exec() from inside PHP to interact with your own implementation.
This might be a reasonable path if you cant find an existing tool that solves your problem and you are not willing to spend the time to wrap a library.
In closing
You give a very narrow problem description with little to go on as for what the application is about. A broader discussion (in another forum) might yield better results since the problem might be better solved in another way entirely.
I found something on PHP.net which appears to do what you want:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.readdir.php#103418
Edit: I mis-understood the question. Attributes such as the last modified time, last accessed date and the like are stored in the file systems master file table. As far as I can tell, this isn't accessible with PHP, and if you were to write your own method to do this then you'd also have to account for different file systems as they all handle the storage of these attributes in their own unique way.
It could be that to get all of the information you're looking for is not possible with PHP without writing some form of extension to PHP itself.
Edit 2: Upon researching a little more...
http://php.net/manual/en/function.fileinode.php
This function could be an interesting one to look at.
Well if I understand correctly you just want to securely delete a file. You can just call [shred][1]
[1]: http://linux.die.net/man/1/shred via system or exec if you are on linux and you are good to go

Is there a native PHP class/library that supports fill_form with xfdf?

First, I have researched this on SO and Google already. In fact, based on this, I'm pretty skeptical that what I need exists. I'm almost at the point where I might give up the next 6 months of my life to write something from scratch, since it seems obvious that everyone wants a server-side form filler native to PHP.
Okay, sorry for the rant...
Here is my situation:
1.I need to deliver pre-filled PDF forms to my users.
Because the form is behind cookie-based authentication, Adobe Reader won't open the xfdf, but instead passes the task along to the browser. This is an issue for Linux users and other users who don't use Adobe Reader as their PDF reader.
Oh, and Adobe hasn't written a 64-bit plugin for Snow Leopard yet, so a third of my users have to change Safari to run in 32 bit mode every time they print this form.
Given the above, delivery of the PDF already filled in so that it can be printed in Preview, Foxit, etc, is steadily becoming the most obvious solution.
2. I can't use pdftk
This is a bit silly, but since pdftk is ancient and requires gcj to compile the outdated version of itext that it uses, I can't install pdftk on my host machine. The server doesn't have gcj, and I'd rather avoid requesting that it be installed for this one case.
Also, even if I could install pdftk, I can only do passthru() and other command-line operations via CGI, which I'd also like to avoid.
3. My host currently does not have PDFLib installed,
so I can't use the PDF extension in php. Not that it offers this feature, but I thought maybe it could be used to add the fdf dictionary to the generic form, the same way that itext/pdftk does.
I thought all was lost until I learned about TCPDF and FPDF. It looks like TCPDF has the stronger track record, and more features, but I can't find anything on Google or their documentation about server-side form filling.
If this isn't already obvious, I don't need a library for generating FDFs or XFDFs. I already have that down. But it is proving not to be enough for my users who simply want the combined product.
So I guess my questions are:
Is there a pre-built method for outputting a new PDF that is the generic form with the data from an XFDF filled in?
If not, is there a work around that doesn't entail simply writing in the values on top of the form fields (as opposed to within the fields)? Writing the values on top of the fields means that the javascript won't validate the values and that I'd need to manually change the stream values every time.
If no to both, is there a port of pdftk I haven't found yet that works with PHP and doesn't simply call the binary via command line?
Any help with this is greatly appreciated. If anyone wants to volunteer to help me make such a library, let me know, I'm already hard at work trying to learn PDF syntax, just in case.
TCPDF allows delivering forms pre-filled. Please checkout their example at - http://www.tcpdf.org/examples/example_014.phps , especially the date field and radio buttons in it.

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