Do I need to compile my php files? - php

Hi i'm used to programming with ASP.Net but i got just landed a project doing PHP development.. My question is this, in ASP.Net if you make changes in the code behind you have to recompile the app before uploading. Is it the same with PHP? I know it's not a compiled language but I want to know if I can make changes to the PHP code in a single file and upload and see my changes?
Thanks in advance!

No, you don't have to recompile. So, yes, you can immediately see your changes. It reads and parses each file as it is called which makes things quite a bit simpler.

In PHP, you don't need to recompile before uploading. Simply change the files and that's it.

PHP is an interpreted language, there is no compilation(*). So just uploading the changed code, and refreshing the browser is enough.
(*) there are compilers around to speed up execution, but that is a different matter.

Related

Migrating php code from 5.2 to 5.3

I was asked to help getting a website that was running with 5.2 php code, to work on a 5.3 php server. The site is big, and I can't see the errors that would appear normally when a site isn't working.
I've tried to use the Search and replace function that Dream Weaver has, and simply use it all over the website. But the problem is that I only want to replace functions in PHP documents, and not in js files. When i use Search and replace, in Dreamweaver, it overwrites the js files aswell, and that would cause more errors. Because there's A LOT of files that i have to go through, it would take me a lot of time if i had to go through it manually.
I figured this must be a problem that a lot of firms experiance, so there must be ways to handle this without it being a bigger hassle.
Anybody out there who could help me out ? Any help is much appreciated!
Regards,
Mathias
Check out the official guide about Migrating from PHP 5.2.x to PHP 5.3.x
most existing PHP 5 code should work without changes, but make sure error-reporting is enabled to get some idea of what is going wrong .
I would recommend the use of sed from command line. It is most likely the fastest and most powerful find/replace utility available for LAMP developers.
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html
Dont worry about it! If your code works in php->5 for the most part it will work just fine. 5.3 offers a plethora of options but no doubt your not using them.

Need an advice on text-processing flow

I've been a research programmer (MATLAB) for most of my programming career, writing things for only myself that can be run on my own computer. Now, I'd like to be able to have people submit a comma-delimited text file and get processed text files in return without having to use my computer directly (only 1 MATLAB installment).
I'm thinking perhaps this can be done on my web server (XAMPP) over LAN and some programming language script that can be run on my server. This is what I'm thinking:
have people create comma-delimited text files.
have them go to a site I created on my localhost and submit it via a webpage forum.
have the uploaded file processed in PHP (small files, < 100KB). This involves looking up a MySQL database as well.
have people download the processed files somehow.
Is this a sound system? By "sound" I mean, if you, the expert, wanted to set up this system, would this be the steps and tools you would use? I've been learning PHP lately, and it seems like I could do this using PHP, but I'm not sure if this is the right tool for the task. The whole thing seems ... a bit on-the-fly, as in you upload the file, and things are done in PHP memory (from what I've read) instead of the file being stored on my server and the server running a script using that file (is there a difference?!). I would be greatly thankful if you guys could chime in and give me some pointers on how to do this properly (general ideas, not asking for codes).
PHP is most definitely a good tool for something like this. As meteorainer mentioned, PHP offers a pretty simple solution for most of what you need to do, and is much less complicated (in my opinion) than Java or .NET. I also believe it to be much easier to get started with.
As far as pointers go, a lot of what you need to accomplish can be found in the PHP manual itself, along with code samples. For example:
File uploads:
http://php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php
CSV Processing:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php
or, the method meteorainer mentioned
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php
MySQL Databases:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.mysql.php
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-connect.php
Creating new files:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.fwrite.php
As far as whether or not this is a sound system, that all really depends on what this is going to be used for. I may be wrong, but it sounds like you just need a simple application for a very specific use. If this is the case, I would say it sounds just fine. You can always expand upon it later on if you choose to do so. Adding more security measures, more robust output, things like that. Either way, at the very least, your PHP implementation sounds like pretty good starting point to me.
Ya php can definitely do what you are looking for. You'll be using functions like:
$variablesArray = explode(file_get_contents('uploadedfile.csv'));
To bust open the CVS into a useful array and do some storage/math to that. PHP is definitely your bag.
You have other options, like java and asp, but imo java is far too complicated for what you get out of it, and asp requires a .net license and again, grants nothing over FREE php.

Is there a PHP script that will scan files on my server and tell me when/if one changes?

A few months ago I saw a PHP script built to detect malware injections in files. Basically the script watched for any files on the server to change or for their contents to change, and then emailed an admin if the contents changed. I haven't been able to locate a script that does this but I need one.
Does anyone know of a program like this?
Thanks!
Use an Intrusion Detection System like OSSEC
It's not a PHP script, but you're probably looking for something like the famd package. Possibly used with http://php.net/manual/en/book.fam.php, however, at http://www.php.net/manual/en/fam.installation.php it states:
This extension is considered unmaintained and dead.
... so I don't know what the current alternatives are.

PHP as a Desktop Programming Language

I'm not much of a programmer, PHP is where I'm comfortable. And sometimes I find that I need to do things, such as arrange files or rename files on a mass scale on my computer. And I think I could do this with PHP but I can't of course.
So I was curious, is there a way I could run PHP files as kind of exe files.
EDIT: Fairly important point, using Windows.
just use php.exe (put it in your path) and the name of the php file you want to execute
You should have a look at php gtk
It's not as bad as you put it. PHP may be a very good tool for string related stuff like parsing, renaming etc. Especially if you know PHP.
To use php as script you should add #!/path/to/php as first line and set execution permissions on unixoid systems. In windows you can simply assign the php file ending with your php cli exe so you can click on them or use the script with the "start" command in the windows shell. But make sure that you write your scripts in a way that it is sensible to the current working directory. It may be different to what you might expect sometimes.
to be able to execute php files with double click, just like normal programs, go to the command line, then type
ftype php_script "C:\path\to\php.exe" "%1"
assoc .php=php_script
Check out WinBinder
Sure, just add #!/path/to/php to the top of the file, add the code in tags, and run it as a shell script.
Works fine - the php binary you use is either the cgi one or the purpose built CLI version.
http://www.php-cli.com/
http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php
it would appear so, yes.
Download Wamp Server, install it. Once thats done, add the path to the php.exe to your PATH settings. You can do this by going to control panel->system->change settings->advanced->environment variables. Edit the PATH, add a ';' to the end of the line and then past the path to the php.exe. This is on Vista, it might be different on XP or Windows 7.
My path looks like this after: C:\Sun\SDK\jdk\bin;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.0
Once thats done, you'll be able to execute a php file from the command line. You could create shortcuts too.
C:\Users\Garth Michel>php test.php
This is a test
C:\Users\Garth Michel>
I used php for years as a scripting language before I even bothered to use it as a web programming language.
maybe php is not the right tool to doing this and it's about time to learn another language...use this chance to expand your programming horizion
See the .reg file in this gist, it makes it possible to use .php files exactly like .bat files, e.g. my_script.php foo bar baz
Don't forget to edit paths to suit your setup.
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/download/ Still use html & css as a desktop app and now has support for php.
PHP based web apps like Wordpress and Mediawiki I think uses php to setup and configure itself. Just give IIS proper read/write rights and you can make a simple web app that does massive renaming, etc.. PHP doesn't have to always be used for writing out html.
See ExeOutput for PHP. It has excellent customization and MAGNIFICENT features. Yet it is not an IDE or something. It compiles your PHP+HTML into fully-fledged EXEs.

How might I obtain a Snapshot or Thumbnail of a web page using PHP?

I need to create Snapshots / Thumbshots / Site preview a-site.com.
There are some site as thumbshot.org that meets with I need. But I do not want to use an external service, not to depend on others for my project (What would happen if they close the site?)
For this reason, I am looking for some project to let me do this.
Any idea?
On windows you can use GD's imagegrabwindow() function.
Edit: The help page actually shows you how to grab a screenshot from IE.
There isn't anything in the PHP library to do this - you're looking at setting up an external application (with a queue) to take images, although you can of course use PHP to add items to the queue.
There are a couple of Windows functions in GD that takes screen shots of the computer (webserver - not the client) so perhaps you could write a script in PHP to do this.
Edit: Was thinking of these: imagegrabscreen and imagegrabwindow. I'm not sure they will do what you want however (even in full screen mode Firefox has ablue bar at the top of the screen - not sure about other browsers). However, Pierre has something on these functions if you're interested.
I'd suggest writing an application in another language (I assume .NET has something) to do this for you.
Edit: This page tells you how to do it in C#
There's not much PHP would do for you in this situation. You'd need a complete (X)HTML rendering engine with CSS-support, possibly also with JavaScript support.
That, or use some kind of kinky script that would launch a real browser, and take a screenshot out of that. Either way, PHP is probably not the right tool for the operational part.
There's a Firefox extension that converts the webpage you're viewing to an image:
http://www.screengrab.org/
http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
If you're willing to get creative, it might be possible to access this problematically.
Thanks to all.
I found a pseudo-solution, (using dcom + imagegrabscreen + wamp).
I need to resize the final.png with gd, because the png is equal to resolution of client (in my home, is a picture of 1650*1280).
Whe I end this, I will post a .zip file to dowload
Thanks again
(But if anyone have a better idea, I am happy to see that)
PS: Sorry for my english

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