Merging multiple PHP script into a single file - php

I have a PHP script which includes one or two other libraries it depends on using the 'include' statement. To make it more easily portable, I would like to somehow 'compile' the script and the included libraries it into a single PHP script (in the same way that ack includes all its Perl dependencies in one file). Is there an easy way to do this in PHP?
Clarification: Compiling to a windows executable could be (part of) an acceptable solution, but the script still needs to run on *nix, where it is better to have PHP source code with '#!/usr/bin/env php' at the top.
I want to be able to drop a single file into the $PATH somewhere on any OS and have it work without needing extra PHP libraries to be installed as well.

Newer versions of PHP support a concept similar to jar files in java. Take a look at phar. You could package all of your application files into a single archive and run that.

The PHP packages ScriptJoiner or even better JuggleCode might help:
http://packagist.org/packages/codeless/scriptjoiner
http://packagist.org/packages/codeless/jugglecode
Both are built upon PHP-Parser (http://packagist.org/packages/nikic/php-parser), which makes it very easy to join scriptfiles.

There's no built in way to do that. I would recommend packaging your code up into a directory and distributing it that way. I do this with PHP, I place the code into a directory "something.module", and then have iterate through a modules directory, including the main file underneath each .module directory. But for something more simple, you could just have a structure like:
my_package/
my_package.php
include1.php
include2.php
my_package.php would include(realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/inclue1.php')). All other scrits would just have to include('my_packahe/my_package.php')

Manually, you just remove all references of include/require, and "concatenate" the files together.
you should also strip the open and end tags ('<?php', "?>") before concatenation, and add them in the final file.
For one or two small libraries, it should - hopefully - "just work"...

phc allows this. Just run it with the --include flag, and it will combine all your code (well, every argument to an include, require, etc) into a single PHP file.
If you like, it can also compile it, but that's not required to combine them all into a single file.

You could write a custom script that opens all the files, removes the opening and closing tags, and concatenates them together and saves as one file. should be pretty easy to do.
Or you can use a php compiler. It will do a bit more than what you are looking for, but if you just want one file, you run your dev project through one of these.
http://www.phpcompiler.org/
http://www.roadsend.com/home/index.php?pageID=compiler
You might also be able to use the built in php bytecode compiler to compile everything to byte-code and stick it in one file.
http://us.php.net/bcompiler

Related

Remove useless files from code base

Is there any tool out there which could tell the useless files in the code base?
We have a big code base (PHP, HTML, CSS, JS files) and I want to be able to remove the not needed files. Any help would be appreciated.
I'm guessing deleting files and running your phpunit tests is a none starter.
If your files are not already in a version-control system - add them. Having the files in a version control system (such as svn or git) is crucial to allow you to recover from deleting any files that you thought were not being used but you later find out were.
Then, you can delete anything you think may not be being used, and if it doesn't affect the running of your application you can conclude that the files aren't used. If adverse effects show up - you can restore them from your repository with ease.
The above is most appropriate (probably) for frontend files (css, js, images). Any files you delete that are requested will show up in your webserver error log giving you a quick reference for files that nolonger exist that you need to restore.
For your php files, that's quite a bit more tricky, How did you arrive at a position where you have php files which you aren't using? Anyway you could for example:
Use xdebug
Enable profiling
Use append mode (one profile)
Use all the functions of your application
and you would then have a profile which includes all files you loaded. Scanning the generated profile for each php file in your codebase will give you some indication of which files you didn't use.
If you are only looking for unused files, don't be tempted to use code coverage analysis - it is very intensive and not the level of detail you're asking for.
A slightly less risky way would be to log whenever a file is loaded. e.g. put this at line one of each file:
<?php file_put_contents('/some/location/fileaccess.log', __FILE__, FILE_APPEND); ?>
and simply leave your application to be used for a while (days, weeks). Thereafter just scan that log, for any file that is named - remove the above line of code. For any that are not - delete (preferably after looking for the filename in your whole sourcecode and confirming it's nowhere).
OR: you could use a shutdown function which dumps the response of get_included_files() to a log file. This would allow you to achieve the same without editing all php files in your source tree.
Caveat: Be careful deleting your php files. Whereas a missing css/js/image will probably mean your application still works, a missing php file of course will have rather more impact :).
If it is in Git why not delete the local file and then do a git rm <file name> to remove it from that branch.
Agree with everything said by #AD7six.
What you might like to try with PHP is to log the use of the files in someway (logging to flat file or database).
This technique does not have to be in place for long you can do it with an include and require_once at the top of each file.
That technique also works for javascript functions you can just print to the console each function, and then unit test your site. You can probably clean out a lot of redundant code that way.
The rest is not so easy, but version tracking is the way to go.

How to compile php without unneeded functions to a single file?

I'm trying to create a very small php binary for a specific use. I don't need many of the functions and classes included in commong php. How can I do this?
Thanks.
Checkout php source form svn or download source dist on php.net and build it using manual. It is better to do it on nix systems or compile PHP with cygwin on Win. You can easy configure php extensions when building it and exclude some of it using configure script. If you need more specific configurations you should know how Autotools works couse php uses it.

Put PHP files toghether

Is there a tool to take a PHP file, with all its dependencies to other external PHP files, and create one, huge, final PHP file that includes them all?
Thanks
You don't really want to take a whole library and put it in a single file, because you end up loading a bunch of class definitions that might not even be needed by your script (i.e.: script A might need it, but not script B, however they end up loading it anyway).
PHP 5.3 (and a PECL extension for 5.2) introduced PHARs (PHP Archives), which works a little like JARs (Java equivalent):
$phar = new Phar('myLibrary.phar');
$phar->addFile('myClass.php');
Then you can do:
include_once('phar://myLibrary.phar/myClass.php');
I use it often and it is indeed very useful for quick software updates on client/production servers.
I've never heard of anything like that before, but maybe this could help... not really sure how it works http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/PHP-Clases/Split-and-merge-files-19891.html
It is a new extension built-in PHP 5.3. You can read more about it here
http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.phar.php

Is there such a thing as a converter from php to html?

Don't think that I'm mad, I understand how php works!
That being said. I develop personal website and I usually take advantage of php to avoid repetion during the development phase nothing truly dynamic, only includes for the menus, a couple of foreach and the likes.
When the development phase ends I need to give the website in html files to the client. Is there a tool (crawler?) that can do this for me instead of visiting each page and saving the interpreted html?
You can use wget to download recursively all the pages linked.
You can read more about this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget#Recursive_download
If you need something more powerful that recursive wget, httrack works pretty well. http://www.httrack.com/
Pavuk offers much finer control than wget. And will rewrite the URLs in the grabbed pages if required.
If you want to use a crawler, I would go for the mighty wget.
Otherwise you could also use some build tool like make.
You need to create a file nameed Makefile in the same folder of your php files.
It should contain this:
all: 1st_page.html 2nd_page.html 3rd_page.html
1st_page.html: 1st_page.php
php command
2nd_page.html: 2nd_page.php
php command
3rd_page.html: 3rd_page.php
php command
Note that the php command is not preceded by spaces but by a tabulation.
(See this page for the php command line syntax.)
After that, whenever you want to update your html files just type
make
in your terminal to automatically generate them.
It could seem a lot of work for just a simple job, but make is a very handy tool that you will find useful to automate other tasks as well.
Maybe, command line will help?
If you're on windows, you can use Free Download Manager to crawl a web-site.

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.

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