Is anyone developing application integrated with Mediawiki - using Django or other Python web development platforms using mod_wsgi?
Would be very interested to find out what has been done in this direction and maybe there is some code available for re-use. (I've started creating wiki extensions working with MW database in python whose output is injected via Apache's include virtual directive. it works ok, but a bit slow so far - maybe I can optimize it though)
Basically I would like to have certain parts of displayed wiki pages be prepared with python.
Has anyone reproduced common MW skins in python templates?
edit: found this nice video showing how PyCon site does just that (not with MW though) - using custom template loader
http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=pythonNapleonePyConTech2&fromSeriesID=54
Thanks.
There are so many different ways to do this.
You can make a mediawiki skin that uses iframes and inserts things from a Python server.
You can write a python app that accesses mediawikis data somehow and outputs it.
You can put a Python server in front that extracts the content from mediawiki and put's it into a page that is otherwise generated from Python.
You can use deliverence to skin mediawiki, and use it's pyref functionality to call pythonscripts and insert that into the skin (I think, I haven't done that myself).
Which way is best for you completely depends.
Can't you use Mediawiki HTTP based API? Loose coupling is great.
Related
I keep seeing all these cool new frameworks for web dev, but am very confused, because 95% of the info I read is all just hype, how do they work?
Is it as simple as providing a link in your html to a server that hosts the framework? Or do you have to download the framework, and install it on your own server?
Do web frameworks work with Winhost.com (windows-based hosting with php), or the many other windows-based hosting providers? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but the pages I have visited are very confusing!
Most of the frameworks would require you to download them and re upload them to your hosting.
Since having some crazy requirements would hit the popularity of such framework, most of the populars one tends to have as less as possible requirements. I.e. you don't need to have specific PHP extensions or PHP settings, so it would be possible to use them on any hosting(PHP5 hosting, zf, symphony and other don't play well with PHP4).
In term of what a framework brings you, you can see a framework as a big code base the you can use to make your development faster. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Plus a framework would force you to code more cleanly.
Generally speaking and in a nutshell, they allow you to generate HTML (with code) instead of providing static pages to the users. This also means you get to code less and don't repeat yourself.
PHP and Ruby on Rails are examples of web frameworks. You have to get them installed on a server.
Here's how it works.
Static HTML page is the oldest type of webpage. You write some HTML code, and when the server receive request from browser it parses the URL and determine which HTML file corresponds to the URL.
Dynamic page, is similar to static HTML page; but instead of writing HTML code, you write PHP/ASP/Python/CGI/etc code that writes HTML code.
As it happens, a lot of dynamic websites shares a large chunk of similar PHP/ASP/Python/CGI/etc code. A web framework is a set of pre-written code someone else have written; so instead of you writing the code, you offload half of the code-writing to the web framework's authors.
Different framework have different requirements. The simplest are just several simple PHP pages you can include() into your own codes (i.e. installing is a matter of copying the PHP pages into the same directory as your own code). The more complex one might reverse the role, they take control how the page is processed (i.e. installation is more involved, they might need to tweak the server's configurations).
I am not very experienced with PHP. I have a site I'm maintaining that is on IIS6 using PHP. Right now it is using include files and querystrings to server up content.
For example:
http://mysite/index.php?maincontent=services&subcontent=service1&nav=subnav1
We want to change the site so that URLs look more like (for example):
http://mysite/commercial-services.php
But, I don't want to duplicate code and include files in the 30+ files of the web site.
Is there an easy way with php to have a template that keeps the short urls but allows you to use the same layout file for multiple pages?
I do mostly .net web sites so I guess what I'm looking for is something comparable to asp.net master pages.
I also looked at php frameworks, namely codeigniter. However, that by default leaves an index.php in the middle of the url. From what I read we would need to use some type of isapi rewrite to get rid of that. I can't do that because I don't have access to the server and they don't want to install things on the server.
Is there anything simple we can use or are we limited to using includes?
Update:
For this I ended up converting the site to .net. It was much faster and easier (for me) to do than figure out how to set up something with PHP.
I'd say look at rewrites not frameworks if all you want to do is change the urls, that way you backend php can stay the same but you still get the nice urls.
There's loads of tutorials, quick google gave me:
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/guide-url-rewriting
I have developed a PHP-MySQL web application, which is a school-based project.
My client wants this application to be converted into a .exe file such that it can be installed on his desktop and use it.
How the PHP website can be converted to a .exe file and can it be run without the need of a database/server software?
Please advice.
The convenient solution is not to convert the website to .exe. I think it will be better if you have portable server/php/mysql and make the website work from a usb or CD with autorun.
NuSphere's PhpDock claims to do this: It serves as a deployment helper and comes with a bundled web server. However, I don't know about the database part, and it's not free.
PhpDock enables you to deploy any PHP web application as a Stand Alone Windows Desktop application w/o any changes in the code.
I don't know that particular product, but I have been using their IDE for years and am quite happy.
try using a site-specific browser. it will make a desktop app that is basically a portal running to your webapp. try this one:
https://mozillalabs.com/prism/
It allows alot of advanced features like system tray icons and such. I have used it many times!
Hope this helps, JL
Short answer: Not possible.
Long answer: It depends.
You could install a web- and database server on his machine (or create an installer that does it) and run the application locally on his machine.
or
You keep the application on a server and just provide a launcher that opens his browser and points it to the URL of the application.
As Artefacto mentioned, it might be a good idea to switch to SQLite instead of MySQL but depending on how your application is written it might require a lot of code and SQL Query changes.
No. You have at least to remove the dependency on MySQL (and use e.g. sqlite instead).
Then, you would either have to:
Convert the webpages to windows dialogs. This would completely change your application (e.g. what would originally be http "form submissions" would be someting completely different). At this point, it'd much easier to write a .NET application
Bundle a web server (e.g. Apache) with PHP installed.
Another try would be to turn your php project into PHP-GTK (http://gtk.php.net/).
Yet another one is to give HPHP a try (https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/) and try to turn the generated C code into something like a .DLL in .NET and use it for the logic while coding the UI in say, C#.
Just create a simple program in C or C++ that will just add icon in Start menu, desktop and Quickstart. If your client clicks the icon it will open the default OS browser and point it to URI of your application online.
That might fool your client :)
Or maybe it will be enough for him (he might be asking you to convert it to exe because he can't remember URI or something - ask him what is the reason).
You can use xampp open-source project to pack your PHP site into an executable file.
Use the following steps:-
1. Download Xampp source code.
Add your PHP file inside htdocs directory(Ref:- https://sourceforge.net/p/xampp/code/HEAD/tree/win32/xampp/htdocs/).
Now compile the XAMPP source code and distribute it.
For DATABASE creation and initial data loading in the database, you can code your site in such way that if database is not created, it redirects the page to install.php which do the database creation and data loading task using sql file provided(you need to add SQL file containing database structure and required data).
Don't forget to delete the SQL file post installation of database.
Not sure that's gonna be possible but have a look at:
WinBinder
WinBinder is a new open source
extension for PHP, the script
programming language. It allows PHP
programmers to easily build native
Windows applications.
(source: winbinder.org)
Solution 1:
There are several solutions to convert your web application into a desktop application, the one I prefer is the open source solution: PhpDesktop, but unfortunately it only supports SQLite.
Best Solution:
To convert your PHP application with MySQL I know a paid solution that does this: 'ExeOutPut For Desktop', it is the best for this job
Php desktop is the way to go, it's actually very simple to modify to the version of PHP you want to use and is open source too https://github.com/cztomczak/phpdesktop
I've decided to code some applications in PHP that are supposed to run offline in the user's machine. However, I can't seem to find an user-friendly install wizard to create a local server in where the script will run. Any ideas?
PS: Here's an example of what I want: http://www.nolapro.com
You could go to the old school route and try using PHP-GTK.
Text Tutorial here: http://www.kksou.com/php-gtk2/References/Compiling-standalone-PHP-GTK2-applications-on-windows-using-PriadoBlender.php
or you could go the route that I believe has much more promise: Adobe AIR + PHP
It has the added bonus of running on any platform!
Video tutorials here: http://www.vtc.com/products/Adobe-AIR-PHP-Development-Tutorials.htm
There's also a new player in the game, Appcelerator. It lets you write your code in whatever language you want (PHP, Ruby, Python, etc) and compile it for the platform of choice (iPhone, Android, Windows, OSX). Parts of it are still beta, but it looks unbelievably slick & cool, and there are lots of tutorial videos. http://www.appcelerator.com
I hate to advocate this, because it just feels so wrong. You would probably be better off using a language inteded for use for stand-alone applications, if you're going to be doing this often or in a production setting.
With that said, a colleague of mine used to use the Bambalam PHP to EXE Compiler for this. He actually had a profitable product built around it.
Bambalam will generate an EXE that doesn't rely on any external DLLs, based on your PHP code.
http://www.bambalam.se/bamcompile/
If you have a webapp written, you maybe want to deploy on client, a possible way is use wapache, which is a standalone apache bundled with your application, and an integrated (IE) browser control inside.
http://wapache.sourceforge.net/
A new feature of PHP 5.4 & 6 can help you, the builtin web-server.
http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php
With this feature you can host locally your php app without external webserver, and access on localhost.
If you really talking about a client application you are really wrong to do this.
If you want to wrap a server + browser to deploy your web based application so it runs local you might check out three options:
1) Deploy a simple webkit browser (you can get a QT Webkit Browser in 30 lines of code) and an apache server that is installed somewhere standalone (not via the apache control script as this uses port 80 and i probably conflicts with another installed webserver.
2) Look at the Firefox PRISMA solution. I have read about this only in a news article but it wrapps the firefox around one single start URL. You have to deploy a webserver in the same way as
3) Try to wrap it as a HTA application. Search the corresponding info on MSDN.
I would prefer (1) as you can add special application interacting code as needed.
I've inherited a PHP application that has "versions" of pages (viewacct.php, viewacct2.php, viewacct_rcw.php, etc). I want to discover which of these pages are called from other pages in the application and which are not. Is there a tool available that will help with that?
Using whatever tools you would like (Find/Grep/Sed on Linux, I use Visual Studio on windows), it is just a matter of crawling your source tree for references of the filenames in each file.
Similar to FlySwat's answer: any good text editor or IDE with multi-file search should be able to help you find the orphan pages. On Mac OS X I would suggest TextWrangler(free), TextMate($), or BBEdit($$). I've had good success with each of these tools, but your mileage may vary.
If you wish to find out what pages are called by other pages, you need to look at where stuff is being called. Obviously in php code, you can only reference other files via includes or requires and the singular versions of those functions.
So if I were you I would grep your code for include and then require and attempt to make some kind of map showing what is calling what. Eventually you should end up with a pretty clear map of how the php files talk to each other. Then you will need to work out how the various points of the application talk to each other from there via HTML/AJAX etc.
Good luck. I have done it before, it takes a while, but you'll get there, just make sure you document what you find out.
You may want to try out nWire for PHP.
nWire for PHP is an innovative Eclipse plugin (works with Eclipse PDT & Zend Studio 7) which accelerates PHP development by helping developers navigate through their code and better understand the architecture of their application. nWire offers unique tools for real time code visualization, navigation and search.
nWire analyzes all the components and associations in your project. While opening a file you can immediately see where (and if) it is being used.