I have developed a PHP web application, but a client insists on a real Windows application, since he doesn't like running the software inside a browser.
Are there any solutions for this, any compilers to turn a web project into a Windows exe ?
I have looked at Phc-Win , but that seems more suited for small command line utils, not for entire web-applications...
UPDATE:
just found this myself, both look quite promising...
http://www.zzee.com/phpexe/
http://www.exeoutput.com/index.php
There's no tool for this, short of a simple wrapper app that embeds a browser inside an otherwise normal application window. Your PHP app would have to be completely re-written to include ALL of the overhead code necessary to build a GUI - basically all the 'display' stuff that a browser does automatically, would have to added to your app.
Well some of you did not google good enough:
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-cross-platform-application-development/
Supports most of the "web-languages" to write native Applications.
Tutorial Reference for Appcelerator: http://appceleratortitanium.com/tutorials/3-appcelerator-titanium-tutorial-beginners.html
Quote:
"Q: What languages can I use to make desktop apps?
A: Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, HTML, HTML5, and CSS."
Not exactly what you are looking for: http://www.roadsend.co/home/index.php?pageID=compiler
You may look into "HipHop" (made by Facebook): Converts PHP to compileable C++-
There's a tool for this. :-) I never used it but you can try this: Winbinder.
It is simple to compile your PHP source code into an executable. Facebook released a compiler for PHP in early-2010, called HipHop, which aims to create C++. You could then compile this code, for example using gcc, to machine-code.
The more difficult point for a complex Web-App like yours is the user interface. When compiling the way I described above, the application can be run from command line - this might work for simple tasks, but not, if your application returns HTML.
One possibility to solve this problem is PHP-GTK. PHP-GTK is a API for GTK (the graphical user interface used by Linux Ubuntu by default), written in PHP. Using this solution would have to read some documentation about this API, and you would need to rewrite some parts of your program, but it would probably be the most beautiful solution, because it would create a "native" experience.
Another possible solution could involve Adobe AIR, which lets your create programs for the desktop, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but I don't know if and how this would work together with your compiled PHP.
Please also note that it isn't absolutely necessary to compile your PHP for it to run on the client's computer; You could also ship the PHP-interperter right with your (uncompiled) PHP-script. Of course, compiling brings benefits, such as faster execution of the program.
-- André
Related
i have been using the awesome bambalam: http://www.bambalam.se/bamcompile/ compiler to make exe from php source.
But it's getting old, and it doesn't support php5.
Is there another project that will do the trick?
Thanks
ADD1:
i need only for windows
Please note, this was answered before the OP added the vitally important "I need only for windows" addition to the question.
Well the way Facebook handle this is by compiling to an intermediary language, C++, via a piece of software called HipHop for PHP.
There's also PHC, and a few others. Zend Server caches the bytecode which helps a lot.
You can try exe output, get it here, www.exeoutput.com. It has amazing features supports html, flash, javascript, php, etc.
Give a try to one of these tools:
PHPFlexer, if you only have a single php file (like a quick commandline tool)
RapidEXE, if it's several files/folders; here you can even choose a PHP version
PHC-Win, it's the ancestor of PHPFlexer and works pretty well
ExeOutput, a big monster but it gives you a webserver environment and a nice GUI
ZZEE, despite its silly name it's pretty good but features some oldish PHP
The first 3 is command-line, the last 2 are able to develop a window-based application; but they're slow, sometimes a bit tricky to configure and they also make a big fat exe file that loads relatively slow (especially ExeOutput). Command line ones are pretty compact and easy to use, with an output exe around 2MB.
I need to write a small addition to a Python+Django based website, hosted on Google Apps. Trouble is that I don't have any experience with Python.
The addition is pretty straight forward, it requires little database access
So thought of 2 possible solution's:
Quickly dive into Python and get it done with Python.
Run PHP on Quercus and write this particular addition in PHP, then somehow combine it into the website as a dingle PHP page.
Edit: There is another option I thought of:
Writing it in PHP and hosting it on an external server, embedding it in an iframe. The addition I am writing has no need to be SEO friendly, so an iframe will have no negative effect on the website.
What do you suggest?
I am not sure about how you will run php on GAE since it only support Java and Python.
I'd go with solution 1. Python isn't hard to apprehend, you should find ready-to-go code snippets in GAE documentation, and its Datastore doesn't seem too hard to use :D
there's a nice tutorial in GAE documentation: here
Quercus on App Engine runs on the Java runtime, while Python runs on, er, the Python runtime. While you can run one app with multiple runtimes, they have to be different major versions, which means that communication between them will be awkward - you'd have to make URLFetches between them.
I think you'll find it's far simpler to learn enough Python to make the changes. And trust me, you won't regret learning Python. ;)
I've been wondering. Is it possible to use php to create applications apart from just websites. If yes, whats the simplest resource?
PHP can be used from the command line like you would Python or Perl.
With an extension like PHP-GTK you can add GUI functionality to applications as well.
Although I'd generally recommend other languages to do more general scripting, and especially GUI type apps, PHP can be used to build general purpose scripts and apps.
more info on shell scripting with PHP
Using PHP-GTK to build GUI apps.
Yes, PHP is a general purpose scripting language but was originally designed as a server side scripting language and that shows (e.g., the <?php tag). Details are available on the official site http://www.php.net/docs.php
You can do command line scripting and windowed apps (with GTK).
http://gtk.php.net/
PHP's largest asset is probably its integration with Apache so it is 'meant' to be used for web applications. But there are other uses. For example, I use PHP through the command line ever day to administer Drupal websites, through a program called 'Drush' (Drupal Shell). You can Drush see at http://docs.drush.org/. Drush is a bash wrapper for a PHP application that bootstraps Drupal and make changes to the database, as well as interact with the file structure and CVS repository. Granted, the reason it is written in PHP is because Drupal is written in PHP, but there is no web interface. Hopefully that is a helpful real world example?
I need to create a web application that tars files on a remote server then moves those files to another server. I am new to scripting languages and was wondering if there are advantages to php or perl for this type of application.
Not really. Both will get the job done just as good as the other. The bottleneck of both will be connecting to the remote server.
PHP was originally derived from Perl, so the syntax between the two are very similar. It's all a matter of taste.
PHP is nice because many Apache servers are setup to allow you to embed PHP code inside your HTML pages. This makes PHP very popular in building things like CMS systems and bulletin boards.
I personally think that the PHP syntax is sloppy. There's way too many specific functions and they're not clearly thought out. The syntax changes from one function to another. I guess it's part of PHP's group based philosophy where a lot of people add a lot of features. I also like Perl's use strict and use warnings pragmas which I find save me a lot of grief.
But, as I said, when it comes to webpage development, PHP is ahead of Perl.
(Yes, I know about modperl, but that's not usually installed in most Apache servers).
I'd say to go ahead and learn both. I believe the Perl books are some of the best written programming guides I've seen. I haven't been too thrilled with the PHP ones. Maybe its because Perl is just more established, so the documentation has been better defined.
Then again, if you're going to learn something, maybe you should try Python. I'm not a fan of Python, but its the up and coming language that most people are learning these days. Google uses Python extensively. And, don't forget Ruby which has the webbased Rails platform that's very popular.
By the way, what you want to do isn't part of the default language, but most languages have modules that are easily installable. For example, you'll need Archive::Tar and LWP for Perl. These can be downloaded from the CPAN module archive.
It's going to take you a while to pick up enough of any language to do what you want, so be patient and have fun.
You need this ssh extension http://php.net/manual/en/book.ssh2.php
It support calling ssh using ssh2_connect.
And you can bundle with tar, scp, or even rsync
I have been pondering about this for a few days, and I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet or isn't very popular.
What I would like to see was a way to run a PHP application inside a desktop application. For example, the application would need its own mini webserver that doesn't handle requests, but allows PHP to be run.
Sometimes I have been set with tasks that clients demand coded in C# or .NET, and I think to myself 'I could have this done so much quicker if I could use PHP'.
Does anyone have any information on this subject? And FYI I do know PHP is meant to be a web programming language and is not meant to be run in a desktop application, but I'm intrigued :)
PHP-GTK hasn't had a new version since 2008, but it may suit your needs.
http://gtk.php.net/ is exactly what you want. You will be using an old GTK version, at least until a new php-gtk version is released (which is expected soon, according to the main page), but even that shouldn't be a big problem.
Also, see http://news.php.net/php.gtk.dev, it shows there is still activity on the project.
If you mean console (command-line) applications then by all means you can do that. I do it all the time, both on Windows and Linux. Obviously you will not have web-server related variables ($_GET and so on) but other than that you have full functionality of PHP.
See this for details.
PHP installations come with two executables, one for CGI (common gateway interface) and one for CLI (command line interface). Just set up PHP on your machine and use the correct php.exe.
If you mean applications with windows then, like others say, there are frameworks for this, but I doubt this is a good idea.
Well if you write a simple shell in .NET, you can drag a web browser object into the desktop app and simply show a webpage inside there, without the browser controls (back, home, etc).
This is a bit hackish, if you want a desktop app, code a desktop app, you'd be surprised how easy it is in C#.NET. And obviously the PHP needs to run somewhere, either on an external website or a local web server (ex: XAMP)
I've done a couple of applications for a customer using miniPHP Studio for exactly the same reasons. Both me and the customer were happy about the result. Might take some time to get used to it, but it has a kind of a debugger built into the IDE and, being based on Winbinder, you can use its forum to pick up more code samples.
Stuff I definitely found out works well with it: PDO, MySQL, SQLite, cURL, mbsting, mhash, mcrypt, bz2, ADODb (after modifications), running external programs. Stuff I never managed to make behave: FreePDF, having the input fields accept Unicode characters.
For the future (read: as soon as I find some free time) I'm gonna take a look at Titanium. This one definitely looks as being actively developed and on a path upwards.
PHP Nightrain is a packager written in Python for the PHP Programming Language. Using this tool you can convert your PHP/HTML/CSS/Javascript application to a Native Desktop Application. Currently, PHP Nightrain supports the Windows, Mac (OS X) and the Linux operating systems.
Features:
PHP 5 Pre-compiled
Option to use your own PHP
GUI rendering your PHP/HTML Web Application
Set custom width and height
Start application Maximized if required
Start application Fullscreen if required
Window Title changes as the value of the title tag changes
executable for Windows
executable for Mac
.app file for Mac
executable for Linux
https://github.com/naetech/nightrain
http://www.naetech.com/php-nightrain