Is there a native PHP wbxml API that can be used platform-independently? Perhaps a loadable module?
I have seen the pecl implementations but I have not been able to successfully work with the builds on win32 platforms.
I am not an expert, but what I found out there numbered two options, essentially.
One, the pecl library that you are having trouble with.
Two, I found WBXML encoder and decoder classes in Horde of all places. They might give you a starting point, and since they are open source, they might meet your needs quite nicely. Here is a link where I found them.
http://phpxref.com/xref/horde/lib/XML/WBXML/index.html
I don't know a huge amount about WBXML, but from what I can gather it's a binary-formatted XML file. I suppose at the simplest you could use the XML modules such as simpleXML to generate your XML document, output it as a string and then use PHP's built in file handling functions (fopen, fwrite, etc) to dump the string as binary data to a file. To reverse the process load the file as a string and have SimpleXML parse it.
However, without knowing the specific details of the WBXML format, I'm sure there's more to it tan that. You'd also have to implement the necessary code yourself, but as you could implement it in PHP itself that should make cross-platform portability a bit simpler to accomplish.
Not really an answer as such, I'm afraid, but I hope it gets you going in the right direction.
Related
I am build a application in Delphi that stores some configuration that is not going to be passive to query filters on the database. So I decided to create some blob text fields to store those configurations that will only be used as keys to configure some modules of the application.
In this Delphi side of the application, I am using NativeXML run-time components to decode the configuration class or record type of each module into/from XML and populate that field on the database.
My problem came when I realized that this application will have a web site module where people will register for clinical attending and this part will need to use some of the configuration stored on that XML on the database. So...
I am newbie on PHP and I wish to know from you if PHP has the ability to do that XML<->Object\Record DeCoding or do I have to look for a library that makes it possible?
Note: If there is only a record type capacity, I will use it, but if not, I prefer to use classes
Edit:
In response to some comments on answers, I would say that I use XML instead of JSON because of this Delphi XML library that suited me well! If someone could point me to a goo JSON DeCode library to convert JSON<->Delphi Objects will really use it instead of XML because I like to work with JSON. Would that solve the problem on the PHP parsing?
That is not that easy in PHP. However there are lots of smart folks out there, who where facing the same problem.
Paul Ferrertt has a XML-Encode Class here:
http://www.paulferrett.com/2009/encoding-an-object-in-xml-with-php/
In PHP there are multiple functions to decode a XML sheet. Start here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/refs.xml.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.xml-parse.php
However you won' t be able to get an object back as easy as with json_decode() and that for a reason XML is not meant to transfer objects (and the like) around. You have to write your own conversion methods.
I suggest you to read this : http://www.php.net/manual/en/refs.xml.php. Some of these libraries are easier to use that are others, some others are more powerful, etc.
I have a project that is done but needs better performance.
The gist of the project is that I'm taking XML and converting it to CSV files. The files represent data to be loaded into a Database.
Right now I'm using PHP to unzip the zip file that contains the XML. Then I parse, convert to CSV, and rezip.
It's been fine till now but the XML files are getting HUGE now. So much that processing takes a little more than a day. I'm also doing some manipulations in there somewhere to the files, like rearranging columns and trims.
What alternatives do you suggest that would help me improve performance?
I've thought about writing this parser in C++ but I'm not sure of what route to take. Similar questions have been asked but this is more of a performance issue I suppose. Should I switch languages for performance, stick with PHP and optimize that, should I try to make this parser parallel so more than one file can be done at a time?
What would you suggest?
You should give Perl a try if PHP doesn't deliver what you wont, but I doubt, maybe you are doing something wrong there (logically).
What kind of XML parser are you using? (Its better be a SAX one...).
Also, it would be nice to see some code (how you parse the XMLs...)
I'm writing a WordPress plugin to create an eBook from a selected category in most major eBook formats. I would like to support MobiPocket since that's the format used by the Kindle but I'm not sure how to go about it. From what I've read .mobi files are actually Palm Resource Databases (PRC) but I haven't been able to find a PHP class to work with these.
I thought about using exec along with KindleGen but that would be undesirable as it would complicate initial setup. I've also thought about hosting a web service somewhere and using XML-RPC to accomplish this but that also complicates things.
My question is: is there a PHP class/library (PHP-only preferred) that can work with PRC or even better, a class that specialises in creating MobiPocket ebooks? (needs to be open source since I'm releasing under the GPL)
I've tried searching but haven't been able to find anything.
I don't know whether you're still looking for this PHP library, but just in case: https://github.com/raiju/phpMobi. This is a library that creates mobi files from html files.
It's should still be seen as an experimental version, but it should work without a problem for basic document with a few images.
Unfortunately not; however, the binary compiled format is an open specification available at:
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen
The only direct way of transforming the uncompiled format is using the native XML functionality of PHP to create them and then invoking a compiler with exec, which I understand you don't want to do. If you go with this route, the link above also has details about this XML format.
You might want to try the mobiperl tools,
https://dev.mobileread.com/trac/mobiperl/wiki
Please note I haven't tested them yet. But they have been
around since at least 2007 so they should work well by now.
google "Mobiperl - Perl tools for handling MobiPocket files" to
find a thread on mobileread board discussing it. As a new
poster I can't put 2 hyperlinks into my reply.
Another tool I have recently found (but not yet tested), is: http://www.phpclasses.org/package/8173-PHP-Generate-Kindle-ebook-file-in-mobi-format.html#files
It is based upon KindleGen, and looks pretty straight forward to implement.
I was looking for php encoder and found a zend safeguard. I googled about safeguard and found out that there are many decoders for zend safeguard.
Zend told me that it is not possible to decode zend encoded files, but users over the internet do not agree.
I cannot seem to find a clear answer for my situation.
what do you guys think?
To put it simply, it must be decoded for you to be able to run it. At some point, the encrypted data is decrypted to PHP bytecode during normal operation, meaning it's possible for someone to capture that bytecode and store it, unencrypted.
However, it's probably impossible to retrieve the original PHP source, just like you can't get the original C++ code, comments and all, by decompiling a .exe file.
So, in the end, both sides are right, for specific meanings of "decode".
And tools like Zend Guard will never stop a determined attacker, making their value questionable.
The source code can be decoded back in to valid PHP, there are some less than reputable services out there..
However, not encoding your source normally works out fine, since it allows people to hack their own code in to make a slightly customised version
I have normally hand written xml like this:
<tag><?= $value ?></tag>
Having found tools such as simpleXML, should I be using those instead? What's the advantage of doing it using a tool like that?
Good XML tools will ensure that the resulting XML file properly validates against the DTD you are using.
Good XML tools also save a bunch of repetitive typing of tags.
If you're dealing with a small bit of XML, there's little harm in doing it by hand (as long as you can avoid typos). However, with larger documents you're frequently better off using an editor, which can validate your doc against the schema and protect against typos.
You could use the DOM extenstion which can be quite cumbersome to code against. My personal opinion is that the most effective way to write XML documents from ground up is the XMLWriter extension that comes with PHP and is enabled by default in recent versions.
$w=new XMLWriter();
$w->openMemory();
$w->startDocument('1.0','UTF-8');
$w->startElement("root");
$w->writeAttribute("ah", "OK");
$w->text('Wow, it works!');
$w->endElement();
echo htmlentities($w->outputMemory(true));
using a good XML generator will greatly reduce potential errors due to fat-fingering, lapse of attention, or whatever other human frailty. there are several different levels of machine assistance to choose from, however:
at the very least, use a programmer's text editor that does syntax highlighting and auto-indentation. just noticing that your text is a different color than you expect, or not lining up the way you expect, can tip you off to a typo you might otherwise have missed.
better yet, take a step back and write the XML as a data structure of whatever language you prefer, than convert that data structure to XML. Perl gives you modules such as the lightweight XML::Simple for small jobs or the heftier XML::Generator; using XML::Simple is just a matter of arranging your content into a standard Perl hash of hashes and running it through the appropriate method.
-steve
Producing XML via any sort of string manipulation opens the door for bugs to get into your code. The extremely simple example you posted, for instance, won't produce well-formed XML if $value contains an ampersand.
There aren't a lot of edge cases in XML, but there are enough that it's a waste of time to write your own code to handle them. (And if you don't handle them, your code will unexpectedly fail someday. Nobody wants that.) Any good XML tool will automatically handle those cases.
Use the generator.
The advantage of using a generator is you have consistent markup and don't run the risk of fat-fingering a bracket or quote, or forgetting to encode something. This is crucial because these mistakes will not be found until runtime, unless you have significant tests to ensure otherwise.
hand writing isn't always the best practice, because in large XML ou can write wrong tags and can be difficult to find the reason of an error. So I suggest to use XMl parsers to create XML files.
Speed may be an issue... handwritten can be a lot faster.
The XML tools in eclipse are really useful too. Just create a new xml schema and document, and you can easily use most of the graphical tools. I do like to point out that a prior understanding of how schemas work will be of use.
Always use a tool of some kind. XML can be very complex, I know that the PHP guys are used to working with hackey little stuff, but its a huge code smell in the .NET world if someone doesn't use System.XML for creating XML.