Will it downgrade performance significantly (or exhaust the server with http requests), or maybe ill advised, to do something like this
echo "<span>enter_username_message</span>";
and centralize this constant along with all output messages in one file, so that those could be changed without getting into the code:
define('enter_username_message','username please');
that way, if someone were viewing the website in its spanish version, I could simply direct php to require all those output-message constants from a spanish file.
define('enter_username_message','username por favor');
what do you think?
You should probably just use gettext: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.gettext.php
It's designed for the kind of thing you're talking about.
Edit
Apparently PHP gettext isn't thread safe (ugh, I hate PHP), so perhaps look at something like Zent Translate with the gettext adapter, which is thread safe:
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.translate.adapter.html
My reason for suggesting using something gettext based is the various tools that are available for creating and editing gettext .po/.mo files, which make creating translations easier than just going through some text file and editing things.
Related
If I would like to distribute PHP application with installer(package system of OS) how should I proceed? I don't want PHP files to be there, just working application, so when I type 'app' into console, it ends up being launching application, without need to install PHP on system(no php installation on host required). I would also like the application to have patch-able byte-code, so it's in parts, loaded when needed and only part needs to be replaced on update.
What I would do now is following:
->Compile PHP with extensions for specific platform.
->Make binary application which launches '/full/php app' when app is launched.
->Pack it in installer in a way, that there would be binary added to path when added, launching specific installation of PHP which is alongside the app with argument of start point->App would be running.
Problem is:
Maybe I don't want my PHP files to be exposed(in application, there will be available source anyway) is there some ready made stuff to do this? Is there some better way than I proposed?
Alternative: Modifying OP Cache to work with "packing" application to deliver byte codes to modified OP Cache which just reads the cache.
My suggestion would be a tiny tool I just finished, for almost exactly the same problem. (Oh yes I tried all the others but they're old and rusty, sometimes they're stuck with 4.x syntax, have no support, have no proper documentation, etc)
So here's RapidEXE:
http://deneskellner.com/sw/rapidexe
In the classical way, it's not a really-real compiler, just a glorified packer, but does exactly what you need: the output exe will be standalone, carrying everything with it and transparently building an ad-hoc runtime environment. Don't worry, it all happens very fast.
It uses PHP 7.2 / Win64 by default but has 5.x too, for XP compatibility.
It's freeware, obviously. (MIT License.)
(Just telling this because I don't want anyone to think I'm advertising or something. I just took a few minutes to read the guidelines about own-product answers and I'm trying to stay within the Code of the Jedi here.)
However...
I would also like the application to have patch-able byte-code, so it's in parts, loaded when needed and only part needs to be replaced on update.
It's easier to recompile the exe. You can extract the payload pieces of course but the source pack is one big zip; there seems to be no real advantage of handling it separately. Recompiling a project is just one command.
Maybe I don't want my PHP files to be exposed(in application, there will be available source anyway)
In this case, the exe contains your source compressed but eventually they get extracted into a temp folder. They're deleted immediately after run but, well, this is no protection whatsoever. Obfuscation seems to be the only viable option.
If something goes wrong, feel free to comment or drop me a line on developer-at-deneskellner-dot-com. (I mean, I just finished it, it's brand new, it may misbehave so consider it something like a beta for now.)
Happy compiling!
PHP doesn't do that natively, but here are a few ideas:
Self-extracting archive
Many archival programs allow you to create a self-extracting archive and some even allow to run a program after extraction. Configure it so that it extracts php.exe and all your code to a temp folder and then runs ir from there; deleting after the script has complete.
Transpilers/compilers
There's the old HPHC which translates PHP code to C++, and its wikipedia age also contains links to other, similar projects. Perhaps you can take advantage of those.
Modified PHP
PHP itself is opensource. You should be able to modify it withot too much difficulty to take the source code from another location, like some resource compiled directly inside the php.exe.
Use Zend Guard tool that compiles and converts the plain-text PHP scripts into a platform-independent binary format known as a 'Zend Intermediate Code' file. These encoded binary files can then be distributed instead of the plain text PHP. Zend Guard loaders are available for Windows and Linux platform that enables PHP to run the scripts encoded by Zend Guard.
Refer to http://www.zend.com/en/products/zend-guard
I would like to add another answer for anyone who might be Googling for answers.
Peach Pie compiler/runtime
There is an alternative method to run (and build apps from) .php source codes, without using the standard php.exe runtime. The solution is based on C#/.NET and is actually able to compile php source files to .NET bytecode.
This allows you to distribute your program without exposing its source code.
You can learn more about the project at:
https://www.peachpie.io/
You've got 3 overlapping questions.
1. Can I create a stand-alone executable from a PHP application?
Answered in this question. TL;DR: yes, but it's tricky, and many of the tools you might use are semi-abandoned.
2. Can I package my executable for distribution on client machines?
Yes, though it depends on how you answer question 1. If you use the .Net compiler, your options are different to the C++ option.
3. Can I protect my source code once I've created the application?
Again, depends on how you answer question 1. Many compilers include an "obfuscator" option which makes it hard to make sense of any information you get from decompiling the app. However, a determined attacker can probably get through that (this is why software piracy is possible).
I'm having many websites installed on the same webserver. What i wanna do, is to be able to include a same file from different websites as
<?php include '/home/site/www/path/to/file.php'; ?>
and in the same time block functions like highlight_file and file so using the following code won't displays my files content
<?php echo hightlight_file('/home/site/www/path/to/file.php'); ?>
Any help will be appreciated.
If you want your PHP files to be runnable but be safe from being read, your best option is to encode them.
Take a look at IonCube PHP Encoder and SendGuard , they are both very popular options to protect source code.
Blocking PHP function can work, but you'll never be safe because you can forget functions (can you reall list them all? What if there's one you actually need?), or new functions could be added in the future and if you do not block them you'd be exposed.
...so using the following code won't displays my files content
Does that mean you want to allow other people to deploy code on the server which calls your code without revealing the PHP source? If so, then disabling highlight_file isn't going to help much. You also need to disable include, require, fopen, file_get_contents, the imap extension and several other things - which means they won't be able to access your code at all.
If you're letting other people whom you don't necessarily trust deploy code on your server then there are lots of things you need to do to isolate each account - it's not a trivial exercise and well beyond the scope of an answer here. But it's not really possible to allow access to a shared include file without providing access to the source code. Using encoded PHP solves some problems but introduces others. A better solution is to expose the functionality via a web or socket API (this solves the sharing problem but not the isolation problem).
Setting up the multi language site I now need to decide which option I need to use for static text on the site. Let me explain my site setup and then if you can help me decide which solution to use.
The site is a CMS system that allows multiple domains to point to the same directory and serves content based on the domain name. So all domains share the same code. On the site I created blocks of code, called modules, that do specific jobs. So I might have a module that all it does is display the latest news from the database. I then can decide what page that module can display on and what site it will display on. So my question is, would gettext work for multiple domains that may have different modules showing up on different pages? Or should I just create a language file for each module that contains an array which has the language conversation for that specific module? So if I had 10 modules, each module would have its own language file and whatever page each module shows up it just refers to the array in the language file for that module to decide what text to show? Hope this makes sense, I read a lot about gettext and using the array version, but cant decide which one is better for this type of site setup.
A lot of CMS uses the array version. I have seen GetText as well for scalable applications. The array version is simpler especially when you want to manage the translation from a web interface.
It is a matter of preference of course.
In my opinion PHP gettext is the way to go. In all my projects I use the wordpress style for translation. http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress and using the same functions naming convention:
__('message') // Return the translation
_e('message') // echo's the translation
_n('singular_message', 'plural_message', count ) // return singular or plural
I use poedit http://www.poedit.net/ to extract translatable strings from the PHP source and translate them to other languages. Storing and compiling the files in the required PHP gettext directory structure like this:
en_US/LC_MESSAGES/default.mo
nl_NL/LC_MESSAGES/default.mo
de_DE/LC_MESSAGES/default.mo
Note that .mo files are cached by PHP and changes in your .mo file are non existing until you restart the webserver. Pulling my hair out while developing I came across this very helpfull solution: http://blog.ghost3k.net/articles/php/11/gettext-caching-in-php
The whole gettext thing took me a while to work it out, but is was worth it. Once in place it saved me a great deal of time and allowed my clients to do the translation for their projects themselves.
If you want to activate a community for translating your project have a look at the web based translation tool Pootle.
In my experience, raw gettext isn't terribly well suited for a web site context where content changes over time and usually outside of a formal release cycle.
I'd recommend that you take a look at Zend_Translate (and Zend_Locale, if you want to localize dates, numbers, etc). Zend_Translate is a higher-level library that has adapters for various underlying methods (including gettext and arrays).
It's fairly well documented, and can be used as a standalone component.
In fact, I find gettext easier:
You can just echo / print _("your text"); and translate later
It is easy to be helped with getext editors
To generate the boostrap po file (iirc, the /source/ file), you can use etags that will make a kind of grep on your files. So you'll just have to translate tokens later.
So basically, everything works since the beginning of the project, it is then easier to start, and more convenient for upscale.
I would recommend using gettext. It's a well-established set of tools. There is a tool to automatically extract text strings from your source code (xgettext) and there are other tools that help you with translating your localization files, for example, poedit ( http://www.poedit.net/ ).
If you are running PHP 5.3 and/or have the intl extension installed, there's another option, too: messageformatter:
http://php.net/manual/en/class.messageformatter.php
This is very powerful, but it lacks -- in my opinion -- a little bit of documentation and might be overkill for your purpose. You can find some more information about this at the ICU project's page:
http://userguide.icu-project.org/formatparse/messages
We're developing a multi-language website and in case of changes to the original text (English) they shouldn't appear on the site until all of the localized entries are changed accordingly. I don't think that's possible to do with gettext/POEdit alone (?). Another thing is concurrency of translation. If a bunch of people would edit the same gettext files on their PCs and then upload the changes to SVN, the situation when some translations were done by many people is inevitable.
Therefore it seems to be a good idea to store changed phrases in the database and once every language has its translation, make changes to po/mo files so that there is at every moment just actual information on the site.
Is it possible to make changes to gettext translation files with PHP? If not, should we forsake gettext in lieu of storing everything in the database?
Thanks
Well, I've tried a bunch of stuff and it seems that PEAR File/Gettext is the way to go. I seems to be kind of abandoned and files, created by POEdit and File/Gettext aren't binary similar, but I've checked the differences and they are mostly in metadata (which isn't needed for the proper functioning either way), except the hashtable, which isn't handled in the PHP package, but the docs for the mo state that the hashtable isn't required either and it's questionable whether is must be contained in those files :)
Im making a small experiment. In the old days, most people would save configuration files in a php file as a bunch of constants or a class with a loooot of attributes. Now, we see projects like symfony using yaml or something else. My question is:
If you could can pick from three different ways to store your config files: xml, yaml or php files, which one would you pick? Most important: Why?
Thanks for your help
For me it depends on who is going to touch that configuration.
If it is developers, then PHP files are the best, as they do not require any additional parsing.
If it is technical users (for example, other developers, or sysadmins) then there is choice: complicated config file would better go with a structured file, like XML or YAML, as there is less chance to break the PHP code if something goes wrong (and you can report a specific parsing error with suggestions how to fix). Simple choices can be written with PHP (but here if someone forgets a quote character the program will fail with strange errors, or with no errors at all if errors go to the log only!).
If it is final users... then no configuration files should be exposed at all, in my opinion. You need to provide an installer which will handle everything (and generate the machine-readable configuration files or write things to the db).