I am looking for a way to run an executable on the server and display its UI in the browser, so that the user can interact. Is it possible? If so, please suggest some ways of how I should do this.
I think that this will have something to do with Flash, Flex, ActiveX (choose which applicable), but I am not sure and that is why I am actually asking this question.
Before you ask, "What do I need this for?", I would like to create a simple Intranet website for my local network so that my relatives can use few applications from their browsers instead of network shares or remote desktop connections.
The website will be done in PHP and running on Apache.
Any ideas, people?
This is difficult because you cannot magically transform the UI of those applications to a UI that would render in a browser. Also, your Delphi applications likely dont have any entry points for handling HTTP based requests. Even if you could provide those via PHP you'd still have to delegate them to the executable then somehow, which means your Delphi app needs to provide the full functionality via a command line interface or similar means.
EDIT came across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO-qca9ddqg. The video shows how to run applications built with a GTK3 UI, like GIMP, in the browser. The application itself is run and maintained completely on the server. PHP does have bindings for GTK though not for GTK3, so while it's not currently possible, it is in theory.
Related
A friend of ours is running the Plover software for her closed caption and other reporting work. She is trying to find a way to have this post in real time on a local server for others (Hard of Hearing) to watch in real time (but not allow them to edit) from their tablets or laptops on a LAN.
This would be similar to what Stack Overflow does when editing (but over a LAN rather than on the same machine). I type in an edit box, and it prints below in real time. How is this being done? Is there a place to find this code?
I can help her get the WiFi or Blue-tooth to connect to their systems, I just don't know how to get it to push to them. The reporting machine will be running Ubuntu. If I need to install Apache, PHP for her that's fine and just guide them to a URL.
It sounds like the Plover software works at a (keyboard) device driver level, and so can be used to enter steno-to-text in any desktop application. Thus I would arrange things this way:
Put Apache on your reporting server, and set up a web application on there which shows a text box. You can use sockets (ideally) or AJAX (as a fallback) to transport your text from a browser to the server. This can then be sent out to any number of clients on a different page, probably via a database as an intermediate store. AJAX requires frequent polls and so is inefficient and slow, but on a LAN with a small number of users it would still be OK. Sockets are better but need a library to implement - take a look here at a PHP example.
Take a look at this answer to understand the different ways a browser and server can communicate (especially the section on HTML5 Websockets). Pusher is mentioned - that makes it really easy, but if you are broadcasting on a LAN it seems pointless to need the internet. I'd do it myself, for what it's worth.
If you want to stick with AJAX, jQuery, MooTools or Prototype is fine. If you want to use sockets there are several libraries that will use sockets first, and then fall back to a variety of technologies (long polling) and then finally AJAX. This will depend mostly on browser support for these various things.
I believe web sockets need a server component for which Apache is generally considered unsuitable. The first link I gave, for the Ratchet library, looks like it has its own listener component. Perhaps a good first step would be to work through the demos, so you can understand the technology and customise it for your needs?
I have created a html page which sends custom data to a php file which then processes and evaluates it.
My next task is to make this into a GUI with the requirements:
1. A box for a custom search with button (it then posts this into the
php)
2. A box where xml/json request can be seen
3. A box where the xml/json response can be seen
4. A box where the parsed version is translated and made to look pretty.
***MUST CONNECT TO INTERNET, PHP ESTABLISHES CONNECTION BUT DO NOT WANT A GUI ISSUE
Any suggestions on programs or languages etc which can help me communicate with PHP in GUI form. It needs to be able to access the internet!
I was thinking perhaps Visual Basic as that's the only one I've ever used that really uses GUI's but I'm wondering what you all think!
Thanks!
Basically, what you're asking for is a web browser, with a very simple little HTML/Javascript front-end web page to make the PHP calls and display the results. I'm not entirely sure what it is about a browser environment that makes you think it's unsuitable, but it's basically exactly what you're asking for.
If a full-blown web browser really isn't suitable, you could try using a web browser control inside a simple GUI app. This would still work exactly the same, but would be without the browser controls, such as the URL bar.
Just use a browser.
If you don't want to do that -- build a browser.
If you are just looking for basically a web-based REST testing tool, try the Firefox RESTClient plug-in.
Why don't you use a framework ?
You may take a look here:
AppJS for Linux, Windows and Mac using HTML, CSS and Javascript
Adobe AIR : cross-platform using ActionScript/FLEX or HTML/Javascript
Titanium : HTML/CSS (no support anymore)
PhoneGap : mainly used for cross-phone-platform, but here's an Windows implementation of it (you should read the README.md ...)
You may also check this from Mozilla
Not really a coding question exactly, and not sure which stack site to throw this on, so here goes.
Im wondering if there is any framework similar to appmobi/phonegap in the sense everything is sandboxed and compiled into an app format for both iphone and droids. Where the sandboxed server comes with the ability to run PHP on it, I've been tryin to search all day and I've come up with nothing as of yet other then heaps of articles on appmobi/phonegap. This could be a free or paid for framework (preferably free/open source).
If theres no frameworks like that then is there a means of taking something like apache itself that acts and runs like a webserver where I can load php into it, and at the end of my project compile it into one final package for use in the mobile markets?
The problem is that iOS generally uses Objective-C and the Android uses Java, but both can use javascript, which is why phonegap works.
So, unless you can write two webservers, one for iOS and one for Android, and port PHP to run under your webserver, or, more likely, write an interpreter that will take PHP and transform it to run on your webserver, then it would work.
But, if you write a mobile web application and use PHP as the code on the server, then you can send javascript and have that run in a browser on both devices.
The best option would be to have most of your business logic be in REST services that are written in PHP. You can do this in PhoneGap by following this blog:
http://share.ez.no/blogs/thiago-campos-viana/rest-api-basic-http-auth-and-phonegap-using-jquery
Here is the main part of the article though, so you can see how easy it can be.
//10.0.2.2:80 is the localhost in android emulator, app needs internet access
$.get("http://10.0.2.2:80/ez_site/api/ezp/content/node/2",
function(data) {
//code goes here
});
By doing this then you can have most of your business logic in PHP, and have just the UI be in javascript, able to take advantage of the hardware on the phones.
No. Attempting to include a web server and PHP runtime inside of a mobile application would have serious performance implications.
The reason PhoneGap works is because Javascript can execute natively in mobile applications by using the built-in web browser's rendering engine.
I'd like to create an API for a project I'm working on, allowing developers to create desktop and mobile applications built around its functionality. One thing I've always wanted to learn how to do is create a stateless, push notification system, similar to Twitter's Streaming API.
Basically, I want to be able to notify users of any changes to the data in real time, or as close to it as possible. I know that this might be difficult on mobile devices, which is why mobile applications will probably be built to check for updates periodically, to save battery. However, desktop applications won't have that limitation. I'd like to avoid making the application ask the server if there is new information, and instead let the server tell the application that there is new data.
My programming language is PHP and my server is Apache. If I absolutely had to I could switch to Lighttpd or nginx, but that's an absolute last resort since it would require a lot of changes to all of my existing code.
I've read this article:
http://www.zeitoun.net/articles/comet_and_php/start
And tested it out, but unfortunately all that happens is my browser keeps attempting to load the page and never actually displays the time. I suspect this is because, for whatever reason, I've never been able to get output buffering to work on my server, unless I send 64kb (or more) of data. I heard that I had to disable gzip, which I did, and it still didn't work, so I don't know.
Have a look at some existing technologies to help you do this:
Tornado
Tornado is an open source version of the scalable, non-blocking web server and tools that power FriendFeed. The FriendFeed application is written using a web framework that looks a bit like web.py or Google's webapp, but with additional tools and optimizations to take advantage of the underlying non-blocking infrastructure.
Pusher
Pusher is a hosted API for quickly, easily and securely adding scalable realtime functionality via WebSockets to web and mobile apps.
Both are extremely fast and scalable, and I have setup both relatively easily.
Well you could do this in several ways, you could build in a poller at the client side, or you could use something like NodeJS. (http://nodejs.org/) or web sockets.
Yeah another good piece is
http://socket.io/
and
http://elephant.io/
some tuorials like this might also be useful.
http://www.phpbuilder.com/articles/application-architecture/optimization/creating-real-time-applications-with-php-and-websockets.html
I'm playing with an embedded Linux device and looking for a way to get my application code to communicate with a web interface. I need to show some status information from the application on the devices web interface and also would like to have a way to inform the application of any user actions like uploaded files etc. PHP-seems to be a good way to make the interface, but the communication part is harder. I have found the following options, but not sure which would be the easiest and most convenient to use.
Sockets. Have to enable sockets for the PHP first to try this. Don't know if enabling will take much more space.
Database. Seems like an overkill solution.
Shared file. Seems like a lot of work.
Named pipes. Tried this with some success, but not sure if there will be problems with for example on simultaneous page loads. Maybe sockets are easier?
What would be the best way to go? Is there something I'm totally missing? How is this done in those numerous commercial Linux based network switches?
I recently did something very similar using sockets, and it worked really well. I had a Java application that communicates with the device, which listened on a server socket, and the PHP application was the client.
So in your case, the PHP client would initialize the connection, and then the server can reply with the status of the device.
There's plenty of tutorials on how to do client/server socket communication with most languages, so it shouldn't take too long to figure out.
What kind of device is it?
If you work with something like a shared file, how will the device be updated?
How will named pipes run into concurrency problems that sockets will avoid?
In terms of communication from the device to PHP, a file seems perfect. PHP can use something basic like file_get_contents(), the device can just write to the file. If you're worried about the moment in time the file is updated to a quick length check.
In terms of PHP informing the device of what to do, I'm also leaning towards files. Have the device watch a directory, and have the script create a file there with something like file_put_contents($path . uniqid(), $command); That way should two scripts run at the exact sime time, you simply have two files for the device to work with.
Embedded linux boxes for routing with web interface don't use PHP. They use CGI and have shell scripts deliver the web page.
For getting information from the application to the web interface, the Shared file option seems most reasonable to me. The application can just write information into the file which is read by PHP.
The other way round it looks not so good at first. PHP supports locking of files, but it most probably doesn't work on a system level. Perhaps one solution is that in fact every PHP script which has information for the application creates it own file (with a unique id filename, e.g. based on timestamp + random value). The application could watch a designated directory for these files to pop-up. After processing them, it could just delete them. For that, the application only needs write permission on the directory (so file ownership is not an issue).
If possible, use shell scripts.
I did something similar, i wrote a video surveillance application. The video part is handled by motion (a great FOSS package). The application is a turn-key solution on standardized hardware, used to monitor slot-machine casinos. It serves as a kiosk system locally and is accessible via internet. I wrote all UI code in PHP, the local display is a tightly locked down KDE desktop with a full screen browser defaulting to localhost. I used shell scripts to interact with motion and the OS.
On a second thought:
If you can use self-compiled applications on the device: Write a simple program that returns the value you want and use PHP's exec() or passthru() or system().