(The latest version of this document is at http://www.milkywaygalaxy.freeservers.com. You may want to check there for changes).
Definition: PHP is a simple, object-oriented, interpreted, robust, secure, very high-performance, architecture neutral, portable, dynamic scripting language. PHP has "class" keyword similar to Java's "class" keyword. And PHP is designed such that it is 5 times faster than Java, since there is no virtual machine. PHP is very fast becoming a standard, general purpose, object oriented scripting language. PHP is not only meant for web applications but also can be used for developing general applications.
PHP is the next big thing after HTML because today nobody writes static HTML but uses PHP (generate on the fly, embedded dynamic HTML). PHP 'kind-of' supercedes "static HTML". PHP is a very powerful scripting language. PHP will overtake PERL/Python and will replace PERL/Python. PHP is the next-generation PERL/Python scripting. PHP can do whatever PERL or Python does and actually does much more, much better and much, much cleaner.
PHP stands for 'Hypertext Pre-Processor' and is a server side HTML scripting/programming language. PHP is C-like Web scripting language runs on Apache, Netscape/iPlanet, and Microsoft IIS Web servers. PHP is a tool that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages. PHP lets you write simple scripts right in your HTML files much like JavaScript does, except, unlike JavaScript PHP is not browser-dependant. JavaScript is a client-side html-embedded language while PHP is a server-side language. PHP is similar in concept to Netscape's LiveWire Pro product and Microsoft's ASP and Sun Microsystem's JSP.
PHP is not only used for creating web applications, but also for creating general standalone applications.
PHP's strength are :
Why PHP ? PHP is the best because of the following reasons:
PHP was kept the "top secret and strictly confidential" computer language by many companies in the world, but now had become the most well-known and most widely used object oriented scripting language for web, internet, e-commerce, general purpose and business-to-business projects. Even today many competing companies keep PHP language as a highly confidential matter not disclosing to outsiders (competitors).
PHP will storm the entire world and will take the IT industry by surprise!! The power of PHP is that it is cross-platform and runs everywhere!! It runs on Linux, Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, Solaris, HPUX and all flavors of UNIX. PHP is write once and deploy anywhere and everywhere. It runs on many web-servers like Apache, Microsoft IIS, etc..
PHP runs 5 to 20 times faster than Java!! In actual benchmarks, PHP was about 3.7 times faster than JSP (see benchmarks ). PHP is extremely easy to use and you can develop very complex web/e-commerce/general-standalone applications very rapidly in a very short period of time. Developing applications in PHP is about TWO times faster than developing in programming language like Java (because there is no need for compilation in PHP). (In future PHP language will imitate most features of Java language and Java programmers will love PHP. And PHP will have java keywords like class, extends, interface, implements, public, protected, private etc..).
It has object oriented features and takes the best features from Java, C++, PERL and "C" languages. PHP language is a marriage of best features from Java, C++, PERL, Python and C.
PHP is the real gem of all the scripting/programming languges and will soon become the "MECCA" for programmers world-wide!! PHP has a huge user base and a large developer base as it runs on both Window95/NT/2000/XP and all flavors of UNIX'es.
A big surprise is waiting for us - Most probably PHP will be the scripting language of the 21st century!!
PHP can be compiled and optimized to make it run even faster by using the Zend Optimizer. Zend optimizer is integrated with PHP in PHP version 4.0. First, you will write your application in PHP scripting language during development, testing and debugging. Once the project is ready for deployment you will use the Zend compiler to compile the PHP to create executable which will run very fast.
You would normally use a combination of PHP (70% code) + HTML/DHTML/XML (25% code) + Javascript (5% code client side validations) for your e-commerce projects.
PHP initially started on UNIX platform, but it is very portable and runs on MS Windows and MS IIS webserver. Today PHP has a large user base on MS Windows 2000/NT/95/98, You will find a huge collection of tools for PHP under MS Windows platform.
Many PHP programmers develop code on MS Windows and deploy on large linux servers like IBM mainframe running linux, Compaq DEC Alpha and Sun sparc.
A great advantage is that since PHP also runs on UNIX/Linux, developers on UNIX platform "cash on" the user base of PHP under MS windows as the PHP code developed under MS Windows can be used on UNIX/linux without any code change!!
PHP itself is written in 100% "C" langauge, and hence it runs on a very wide variety of platforms like BeOS, UNIX, MS Windows, Apple Macintosh, IBM OS/2 and on many more operating systems.
PHP is very fast and is much faster than Java. For web development, forget Java/JSP, it is PHP, PHP and PHP everywhere!! PHP is also becoming a general purpose object oriented scripting language
Mirror sites are in many countries like www.COUNTRYCODE.php.net, where COUNTRYCODE is like us, fe, sk etc.
PHP is IMMENSELY POPULAR on Microsoft Windows platform and is surprisingly more popular than Microsoft's own ASP web scripting language!! A major reason for popularity is that PHP is a object oriented scripting language whereas ASP is not. PHP has a large collection of re-usable classes (objects). PHP runs lot faster than ASP on MS Windows and has more features and functionalities than Microsoft ASP. PHP is much more robust, reliable and powerful than ASP. And the user base of PHP is extremely large because PHP runs on MS Windows, Linux, Mac OS and all UNIX'es. Greatest advantage of PHP is that you can develop on MS Windows and deploy on Linux or UNIX and vice versa!!
There are more PHP users under MS Windows98/NT/2000 than on any other operating system!! Because there is so much demand for PHP on MS Windows 98/NT/2000, a ready to install executable is made and you simply double-click on the exe file to automatically install PHP in just 2 minutes. Download the PHP executable install file from
You need a web-server to run the PHP on MS Windows. You can use MS IIS web server or you can use free Apache web-server for MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000. To save you lot of time here is the ready-to-install setup.exe file for apache for Windows platform:
PHPTriad which is Apache+PHP+MySQL single package is at http://www.phpgeek.com/phptriad.php and at mirrorsite. I very strongly recommend PHPTriad as it is immensely popular among MS Windows users (millions of downloads).
Apache binaries - http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32
SQL server can be on a seperate box which need not be running MS Windows. You also need a SQL server for doing web development. I recommend that you install Redhat Linux on a very old PC like (Pentium or 486 box) and install the PostgreSQL RPMs on it. You do not need any windows graphics for a database server and at console mode startup the PostgreSQL server. PostgreSQL is about 3 times faster than Oracle or MS SQL server.
The PostgreSQL support code for PHP was written by Adam Sussman asussman@vidya.com
You can also order ready-to-go cheap Linux boxes from -
You can also get PostgreSQL for Windows NT/2000 from http://www.askesis.nl.
See also the PostgreSQL howto at pgsql-howto
After installing PHP, you may want to migrate all the Microsoft ASP programs to PHP. See the chapter ASP2PHP.
See the installation guide and instructions at PHP main site http://www.php.net or INSTALL file in the downloaded package itself.
Apple Macintosh is Unix like operating system. And actually it's father is FreeBSD. It picked up many titbits from other Unices and is quite powerful OS. See the Unix history at Unix Family Tree and click on the item 12 to see the Apple Mac position at Apple Mac tree.
The installation and use of PHP on Apple Mac will be very similar to that of on Unix OS.
To implement a project in object oriented PHP do -
See also Aldev's PHP classes
PHP is an established server-side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages. As a language that has been designed expressly for the Web, it brings many features that commercial entities are looking for:
This is essential for companies who are faced with scarce skilled programming resources and ever-tighter time to market deadlines. In addition, PHP supports all major platforms (UNIX, Windows and even mainframes), and features native support for most popular databases. All these factors make it a very good choice for Web development: such shops working with PHP have reported being able to hire non-programmers and have them producing usable code within days. Programmers familiar with languages such as C, C++ or Java frequently find that they can begin programming in PHP within a few hours.
The fact that PHP was designed specifically for Web development gives it an edge as a development tool, as Intranet Design Magazine explains:
"PHP was built with the needs of Web developers in mind... Unlike other cumbersome, overhead-laden approaches, PHP is lightweight and focused on the Web - where it can solve complex problem scenarios quicker and more easily than comparable technologies."1
Java began its life as a programming language and was initially aimed at running client-side applications inside of Web browsers. Over the last few years, the problems associated with these "applets," as they were known, has led Sun and many other Java developers to use the language in other ways. One of the most prominent ways is in server-side programming, allowing Web sites to connect to databases and produce other server-side applications, or "servlets." Sun came out with Java Server Pages (JSP) as a means of writing servlets. JSP, like PHP, is highly portable across different platforms (even though PHP supports any 32-bit or better platform, whereas JSP supports only platforms that have a Java virtual machine available). However, a beginner with no programming background will find it exceptionally difficult to begin working with servlets,because of the complexity of the language as well as the complicated JSP system design.
JSP's performance also leaves much to be desired: a recent survey in ZDnet's eWeek online publication found that PHP is as much as 3.7 times faster than JSP. In the Web environment, this makes JSP a significantly worse solution - because it can perform less transactions per second, and features considerably slower response times.
ZDnet's eWeek also noted that
"JSP is a relatively new technology and still has clear market immaturities in terms of tools, support resources and available talent."...Because JSP is based on Java, a strongly typed language, we had to declare the types of variables we used and manually convert between types when necessary. This makes JSP the hardest of the scripting languages we tested for nonprogrammers to learn..."
It is important to note JSP is just one language with which Java objects can be accessed. PHP also can also integrate with Java, which means that it can be used as the scripting language for activating Java logic, just as much as JSP can. Unlike JSP, however, PHP also integrates with other component models, such as Microsoft's COM, and adding support for new object models is extremely easy. This means PHP's extensibility is infinite. JSP, on the other hand, is completely dependent on Java.
IBM programmer Sam Ruby uses PHP in combination with Java. Using the native Java support in PHP, Java objects can be created and used transparently, as if they were regular PHP objects.
AuctionWatch , which enables businesses of all sizes to benefit from dynamic pricing environments, has over 2.6 million unique visitors per month; 300K+ registered users; 1.2 million+ auctions launched every month. They tried to use Java, but opted for PHP because it's easier to use and much faster to develop with. For further information, please contact Ben Margolin, Director of Seller Services for AuctionWatch (ben@auctionwatch.com).
Programming consultant Reuven Lerner has made some comparisons among the languages. His view of PHP is summarized as follows:
"The language is easy to learn. Graphic artists and Web designers might claim that they are not programmers, but the fact is that they're doing increasingly large projects in JavaScript, VBScript, and other simple programming languages. PHP is much more regular and well-defined than PERL, and is much easier for new programmers to grasp than Java. Indeed, PHP seems like a server-side version of what JavaScript could have been, but isn't. Someone with little or no programming experience can learn PHP and work with it after a very short period of time. This is probably true for VBScript, but certainly not for PERL or Java....PHP is a truly remarkable and powerful system. I can see why it has become a popular system for producing Web sites.... I think that it will be a very strong competitor against Java and JSPs, and will rise significantly in my recommendations for clients and internal use."
JSP enjoys the backing of Sun; hence its constant media attention. It is interesting to note that despite the lack of any publicity campaign, PHP's popularity is growing at a monthly rate of 8-11%, a percentage far greater than the Internet's 4% monthly growth -- as the demand for server-based applications has risen. More than 6.5 million sites use PHP (Netcraft May 2001 survey). PHP is used on 39% of Apache servers; PERL trails fourth, with 11% of the market. Apache maintains 59% of the Web server market; Microsoft IIS is second, with 28% of market share (E-Soft Inc./SecuritySpace's May 2001 report).
Prominent corporations using PHP include Unilever, Philips, NTT, Cisco, Japan Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, GE Marketplace, Wallstreet:Online Germany; AuctionWatch, VillageVoice, Dialpad and BMC.
PHP began life as a simple little cgi wrapper written in PERL. The name of this first package was Personal Home Page Tools, which later became Personal Home Page Construction Kit.
Old name is Professional Home Pages (PHP) and new name is PHP Hypertext Pre-Processor.
A tool was written to easily embed SQL queries into web pages. It was basically another CGI wrapper that parsed SQL queries and made it easy to create forms and tables based on these queries. This tool was named FI (Form Interpreter).
PHP/FI version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of these two packages combined into a single program. It evolved to a simple programming language embedded inside HTML files. PHP eliminates the need for numerous small PERL cgi programs by allowing you to place simple scripts directly in your HTML files. This speeds up the overall performance of your web pages since the overhead of forking PERL several times has been eliminated. It also makes it easier to manage large web sites by placing all components of a web page in a single html file. By including support for various databases, it also makes it trivial to develop database enabled web pages. Many people find the embedded nature much easier to deal with than trying to create separate HTML and CGI files.
Now PHP/FI is renamed as PHP.
Suppose you have a form:
<FORM ACTION="/cgi-bin/php.cgi/~userid/display.html" METHOD=POST>
<INPUT TYPE="text" name="name">
<INPUT TYPE="text" name="age">
<INPUT TYPE="submit">
<FORM>
< ?echo "Hi $ name, you are $ age years old!<p>" >
The next step once you have figured out how to use variables is to start playing with some logical flow tags in your pages. For example, if you wanted to display different messages based on something the user inputs, you would use if/else logic. In our above example, we can display different things based on the age the user entered by changing our display.html to:
<?
if($age>50);
echo "Hi $name, you are ancient!<p>";
elseif($age>30);
echo "Hi $name, you are very old!<p>";
else;
echo "Hi $name.";
endif;
>
You can also use PHP to configure who is allowed to access your pages. This is done using a built-in configuration screen. With this you could for example specify that only people from certain domains would be allowed to see your pages, or you could create a rule which would password protect certain pages. See the Access Control section for more details.
PHP is also capable of receiving file uploads from any RFC-1867 compliant web browser. This feature lets people upload both text and binary files. With PHP's access control and logical functions, you have full control over who is allowed to upload and what is to be done with the file once it has been uploaded. See the File Upload section for more details.
PHP has support for the PostgreSQL database package. It supports embedded SQL queries in your .HTML files.
PHP also has support for the mysql database package. It supports embedded SQL queries in your .HTML files.
SOAP is an XML-based protocol for messaging and RPC-style communication between two processes. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML Protocol (XP) Working Group is working on a SOAP standard, which will be called XP.
The SOAPX4 (Simple Object Access Protocol) implementation for PHP is at http://dietrich.ganx4.com/soapx4.
Alternate SOAP implementation is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpxmlp.
Krysalis is the XML/XSLT publishing engine, inspired from Cocoon but adapted to the PHP technology.
InterAKT has developed Krysalis to achieve what the next generation of web services have to offer - the complete separation of the information, application logic and presentation layer.
Krysalis is an open-source PHP development platform, based on the XML/XSLT core. It reused most of PHAkt code to create the Krysalis taglib library.
Major features are:
Please visit the Krysalis site for more information http://www.interakt.ro/products/Krysalis.
The PHP is a object-oriented scripting language. Hence PHP code is "classes, classes, classes and classes". When you write PHP code you must design your classes such that they are re-usable or they use existing PHP classes. There are hundreds of PHP classes already written and ready to use. There are classes for accessing databases, classes for generating XML, HTML forms, classes for creating tables, forms and other HTML objects. If you write some generic classes then please upload to sites. By year 2005, there will be more than hundred million re-usable PHP classes. Advantage of PHP classes are they provide - data hiding, inheritance, encapsulation, reliability, reusability and polymorphism. The most important PHP sites are PHP classes and PEAR as given below.
Visit the following web sites which have large collections of ready to use PHP class libraries.
Other PHP utilities are at :
PHPGem is a PHP-script which accelerates the creation of PHP-scripts for working with tables. It works with different SQL-servers such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, mSQL, ODBC, and Adabas. You input a description of and parameters for your tables' fields (field name, on/off searching in the field, etc.), and PHPGem outputs another PHP-script which will work with the tables (view/add/edit/delete/duplicate entries and search). PHPGem works with multi-level nested tables. PHPGem allows you to specify a level of access for each table and for each field for each user. PHPGem also support images.
PHPGem is at http://sptl.org/phpgem
The PHP applications are categorized into more than 60 groups in hotscripts.com site at HotScripts - PHP. You MUST visit this site before looking elsewhere.
Visit the site corporate Intranet/Internet for a very good comparison and listing of applications.
The most popular PHP applications in the order are:
PHP has several tools which are given below:
The following are available for PHP:
The LogiCreate system was designed primarily with open source technologies of Linux, Apache and PHP, LogiCreate provides a unique value in price/performance and costs are kept reasonable. Visit http://www.logicreate.com and click on Download button and read the white papers there.
The following ready-made Web-Portal systems are available:
PHP scripting language provides object oriented features through the class keyword. Features like public, private and protected will be supported in the future release (they are in TODO list). In the meantime, you can use the following coding conventions to distinguish between private, public and protected variables:
class someabc {
var $_conn; // Private variable
var $_Tmyvar; // Protected variable
var $connMYCONNECTION; // Public variable
var $connToDb; // Public variable
var $myvar3; // Public variable
var $myvarTHISTEST; // Public variable
function _foofunction() {} // Private function
function _Tfoofunction() {} // Protected function
function foofunction() {} // Public function
}
The private, protected declarations provide the encapsulation and data-hiding. But you must consider the following disadvantages of encapsulation:
HTML editors for PHP on Windows 95/NT/2000 are:
Many HTML editors are supporting PHP. In near future every HTML editors and XML editor will be supporting PHP "Rapid Application Development" tool.
You will notice that some of the PHP editors run only on MS Windows. Yes!! there are millions of PHP developers on MS Windows platform. PHP is IMMENSELY POPULAR on Microsoft Windows platform and is surprisingly more popular than Microsoft's own ASP web scripting language!! PHP runs lot faster than ASP on MS Windows and has more features and functionalities than Microsoft ASP. PHP is much more robust, reliable and powerful than ASP. There are more PHP users under MS Windows98/NT/2000 than on any other operating system!! PHP initially started on Linux/UNIX environment but today there are more PHP developers on MS Windows platform as compared to UNIX.
PHP IDE tools are at :
PHP IDE/editor on MS Windows platform are :
PHP IDE/editor for bot MS Windows and Linux platforms are :
The best IDE for PHP on linux is Coffeecup Editor as given below:
Zend is a server-side caching software speeds up Web site performance, maximizes hardware resources, and improves the online experience of customers, providing a good return on investment. Zend accelerator caches PHP scripts, helping to reduce processing time and Web server load while enabling administrators to monitor site performance in real time. Cost is $980 and supports Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. Zends provides:
If you want to distribute your PHP source code to your clients, you may want to encode it to protect your code so that it cannot be viewed by the users. Use encoding to hide password, encode scripts etc. Many enterprises require securing the source code as a pre-condition for release process.
Use one of the following Encoding tools:
To convert ASP scripts to PHP use this utility http://asp2php.naken.cc
See also http://www.asp2php.com
Tags are extremely valuable and are used for navigation of source code inside the editors like vi, emacs, CRiSP, NEdit etc... If you had programmed a lot in C, C++ or Java you might have used the ctags program to create tags. To see the online manual page, type 'man ctags' at linux/UNIX bash prompt. The latest version of ctags supports PHP language and is available from http://ctags.sourceforge.net.
NOTE: Do NOT use the ptags given below but instead use the latest ctags which supports PHP language. The program below is just a exercise and sample and was created when older versions of ctags did not support PHP. The listing below is kept for historical reasons (a musuem).
The ptags program for PHP is given below, which you can use to create the tags for PHP source code. Your productivity will improve 3 to 4 times if you use ptags.
See also Vim color text editor for PHP, C, C++ at http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Vim-HOWTO.html
// Save this file as ptags.cpp and compile by
// g++ -o ptags ptags.cpp
//*****************************************************************
// Copyright policy is GNU/GPL but additional request is
// that you include author's name and email on all copies
// Author : Al Dev Email: alavoor[AT]yahoo.com
// Usage : ptags *.php3 *.inc
// This will generate a file called tags
//*****************************************************************
#include <iostream.h>
#include <fstream>
#include <stdio.h> // for sprintf
#include <stdlib.h> // for system
#include <string.h> // for memset
#include <ctype.h> // for isspace
#define BUFF_LEN 1024
#define LOCATION 9
char *ltrim(char *dd);
char *rtrim(char *ee);
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
if (argc < 2)
{
cerr << "\nUsage: " << argv[0] << " file .... " << endl;
exit(0);
}
char fname[100] = "tag_file.out";
FILE *fpout;
ofstream fout(fname);
if (fout.fail())
{
cerr << "\nError opening file : " << fname << endl;
exit(-1);
}
//fpout = fopen(fname, "w");
for (int ii = 1; ii < argc; ii++)
{
/*
char buff[2024];
sprintf(buff, "\\rm -f %s; ls %s > %s 2>/dev/null", outfile, argv[1], outfile);
cout << "\nbuff = " << buff << endl;
system(buff);
fclose(fp);
*/
FILE *fpin = NULL;
fpin = fopen(argv[ii], "r");
if (fpin == NULL)
{
cerr << "\nError opening file : " << argv[ii] << endl;
exit(-1);
}
char buff[BUFF_LEN + 100];
memset(buff, 0, BUFF_LEN +10);
for ( ; fgets(buff, BUFF_LEN, fpin) != NULL; )
{
char aa[BUFF_LEN + 100];
char aapointer[BUFF_LEN + 100];
memset(aa, 0, BUFF_LEN +10);
strcpy(aa, buff);
strcpy(aapointer, ltrim(aa));
strcpy(aa, aapointer);
// Remove the trailing new line..
{
int tmpii = strlen(aa);
if (aa[tmpii-1] == '\n')
aa[tmpii-1] = 0;
}
//cout << "aa is : " << aa << endl;
//cout << "aapointer is : " << aapointer << endl;
if (strncmp(aa, "function ", LOCATION) != 0)
continue;
//cout << buff << endl;
// Example tags file output is like -
// al2 al.c /^al2()$/;" f
{
char bb[BUFF_LEN + 100];
memset(bb, 0, BUFF_LEN +10);
strcpy(bb, & aa[LOCATION]);
char *cc = bb;
while (cc != NULL && *cc != '(')
*cc++;
*cc = 0;
cc = rtrim(bb);
//cout << "bb is : " << bb << endl;
//cout << cc << "\t" << argv[ii] << "\t" << "/^" << aa << "$/;\"\tf" << endl;
fout << cc << "\t" << argv[ii] << "\t" << "/^" << aa << "$/;\"\tf" << endl;
//fprintf(fpout, "%s\t%s\t/^%s$/;\"f\n", cc, argv[ii], aa );
}
memset(buff, 0, BUFF_LEN +10);
}
fclose(fpin);
}
fout.flush();
fout.close();
//fclose(fpout);
// Sort and generate the tag file
{
char tmpaa[1024];
sprintf(tmpaa, "sort %s > tags; \\rm -f %s", fname, fname);
system(tmpaa);
}
}
char *ltrim(char *dd)
{
if (dd == NULL)
return NULL;
while (isspace(*dd))
dd++;
return dd;
}
char *rtrim(char *ee)
{
if (ee == NULL)
return NULL;
int tmpii = strlen(ee) - 1;
for (; tmpii >= 0 ; tmpii--)
{
if (isspace(ee[tmpii]) )
{
//cout << "\nis a space!!" << endl;
ee[tmpii] = 0;
}
}
return ee;
}
You can use one of the following debuggers.
List of PHP debuggers :
To debug PHP programs create a file "debug2.inc" having the following functions :
<?php
/* define this variable, to prevent double declaration. */
if (!defined("_DEBUG2_DEFINED_"))
{
define("_DEBUG2_DEFINED_", 1 );
}
else
return; // if this file is already included then return
# file name : debug2.inc
# Functions for debuging the PHP source code
#*****************************************************************
# Copyright policy is GNU/GPL but additional request is
# that you include author's name and email on all copies
# Author : Al Dev Email: alavoor[AT]yahoo.com
#*****************************************************************
# Usage of this functions -
# In your source code put something like -
# debug2_(__FILE__, __LINE__, "f_somevariable", $f_somevariable);
# And this will generate output in debug.out file.
//function debug2_($fname, $lname, $debug_var, $debug_value=0) {}
// Give read, exec for all on directory /debug2_logs
// chmod a+rwx /debug2_logs
// But here you need to open the file in append mode.
$fp_debug2 = fopen("/debug2_logs/debug.out", "a");
if ($fp_debug2 == false)
{
print "<b>File open failed - global.var.inc<b>";
exit;
}
function debug2_($fname, $lname, $debug_var, $debug_value=0)
{
global $fp_debug2;
//print "<br> debug_value is : $debug_value <br>";
if (!$debug_value)
{
fwrite($fp_debug2, "\n ". $fname ." ". $lname .": $debug_var");
}
else
{
fwrite($fp_debug2, "\n ". $fname . " ". $lname .": $debug_var = $debug_value");
}
//print "<br> f_cookie is : $f_cookie <br>";
}
// In your first page, which is generally index.php3
// truncate the debug2_logs file in beginning of code
function init_debug_file()
{
global $fp_debug2;
$fp_debug2 = fopen("/debug2_logs/debug.out", "w");
if ($fp_debug2 == false)
{
print "<b>File open failed - global.var.inc<b>";
exit;
}
system("chmod a+rwx /debug2_logs/debug.out");
}
?>
In your PHP source code initial page which is generally index.php3, put a line like
<?php
include ("debug2.inc");
init_debug_file();
// all other commands follows here ...
// ...........
?>
To output debug values, in your PHP source code files, put debug2_() calls as illustrated below:
<?php
include ("debug2.inc");
debug2_(__FILE__, __LINE__, "f_somevariable", $f_somevariable);
function aa()
{
$aa = 8;
debug2_(__FILE__, __LINE__, "aa", $aa);
}
?>
When you run the PHP program the output will be traced in the file called debug.out giving the filename, linenumber, variable name and it's value.
Use the debug2_() generously in your code. The usage of debug2_() calls in your program will NOT have any impact on the final production code and also has no impact on the performance because they will be filtered out as described below. You can use copy and paste to save time of typing debug2() calls or use the 'yank to buffer' feature of Vi editor and paste.
When you are done development and testing and when you are ready to deploy on the production server, filter out the debug2_ calls from your source code. At UNIX prompt -
bash$ mkdir production bash$ grep -v debug2_ filea.php3 > production/filea.php3
bash$ mkdir production
bash$ ls *.php3 | while read ans
do
grep -v debug2_ $ans > production/$ans
done
PHP is very powerful and is designed such that it can replace awk, sed, UNIX shell, PERL, Python, "C", C++ and Java.
The object oriented features of PHP is developing very rapidly and in near future will surpass the object oriented features of Java language. All the object oriented features are implemented in PHP via class keyword just like in Java.
If you build the CGI version of PHP, you can use it from the command
line simply typing: php filename where filename is the file you want to
parse. You can also create standalone PHP scripts by making the first
line of your script look something like:
#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
If you want to use PHP as a stand-alone program, just like a shell script, "C" or PERL program, then use this technique:
bash$ php -q filename.php bash$ php -h bash$ php -? bash$ /usr/bin/php -? bash$ php -i
On Microsoft Windows platform you will bringup a MSDOS prompt from Start->Run->cmd and put C:\Program Files\php\bin in your path environment and
C:\> php -q filename.php C:\> php -h C:\> php -? or C:\> c:\Program Files\php\bin\php filename.php
Since PHP is general purpose scripting language and is like a "glue" language, you can use it develop standalone MS Windows GUI applications. PHP can be very easily combined with MS Windows C++ GUI classes to create GUI applications. And developing applications with PHP is extremely fast as it is a scripting language and it's runtime performance is also excellent as compared with other scripting languages like PERL, Visual Basic and Python.
PHP can also be used for developing standalone GUI applications for Linux/UNIX'es.
Fusebox is a FREE web application standard attempting to reduce the 70% software failure rate by creating a standard methodology for writing web applications. This development methodology works with ANY web application small and large.
It is very important to bear in mind that performance and running speed of the web scripting engine must be given TOP PRIORITY. That is, how many pages per second the scripting engine can pump out to the browser clients. The greater the number of pages pumped out to clients in a given period of time, then the better and more powerful the scripting engine is.
The Zdnet did a evaluation and benchmarking of 4 web scripting languages. During benchmarking, the same spec and identical cpu, memory boxes were used. Under identical conditions, it was found that PHP was the fastest - about 3.7 times faster than JSP and about 1.2 times faster than ASP. Read the report at eWeek and mirror-site The benchmark results are -
See also PHP, ASP benchmarks at http://24.221.230.253/php-perl-benchmarks.html
Whenever you design a web site, give attention to these important points:
Everything has limitations or disadvantages and PHP is no exception. The following are the limitations of PHP (so be WARNED !!)
On the other hand, PHP has lot of advantages and it's advantages outweigh it's limitations -
See also Python: If you want 100% pure Object Oriented scripting language than you MUST consider Python. The 'Python' is a object oriented scripting language from ground up. You would be using the Python Web Application server called 'Zope' which is available at - http://www.zope.org and python is at http://www.python.org
Visit the following PHP tutorial sites -
In this tutorial we assume that your server has support for PHP activated and that all files ending in .php are handled by PHP. If you are using Apache then you should edit httpd.conf and make appropriate changes to enable PHP.
Your first PHP-enabled page: Create a file named hello.php and in it put the following lines:
<html> <head> <title> PHP Test</title> </head> <body> <h1> This is an example of php script. <br> Below, you will see one line saying 'Hello World' and 'foo is foobar': </h1> <?php echo "Hello World"; $foo = "foobar"; echo "<br>foo is $foo"; ?> </body> </html>
Copy this file hello.php to the directory known to Apache, like /var/www/html which is also known as DocumentRoot in httpd.conf file. Now, to run this example, bring up a web browser and type the URL http://localhost/hello.php or you can type http://127.0.0.1/hello.php. But make sure you bring up Apache web server on your system. When you run the example you will get an output like:
This is an example of php script. Below, you will see one line saying 'Hello World' and 'foo is foobar': Hello World foo is foobar
Note that this is not like a CGI script. Think of it as a normal HTML file which happens to have a set of special tags available to you.
If you tried this example and it didn't output anything, chances are that the server you are on does not have PHP enabled. Ask your administrator to enable it for you.
The point of the example is to show the special PHP tag format. In this example we used < ?php to indicate the start of a PHP tag. Then we put the PHP statement and left PHP mode by adding the closing tag, ? > . You may jump in and out of PHP mode in an HTML file like this all you want.
We are going to check what sort of browser the person viewing the page is using. In order to do that we check the user agent string that the browser sends as part of its request. This information is stored in a variable. Variables always start with a dollar-sign in PHP. The variable we are interested in is $HTTP_USER_AGENT. To display this variable we can simply do:
<?php echo $HTTP_USER_AGENT; ?>
For the browser that you are using right now to view this page, this displays:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98)
There are many other variables that are automatically set by your web server. You can get a complete list of them by creating a file that looks like this:
<?php phpinfo()?>
Then load up this file in your browser and you will see a page full of information about PHP along with a list of all the variables available to you.
You can put multiple PHP statements inside a PHP tag and create little blocks of code that do more than just a single echo.
<?php
if(strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT,"MSIE")) {
echo "You are using Internet Explorer<br>";
}
?>
We can take this a step further and show how you can jump in and out of PHP mode even in the middle of a PHP block:
<?php
if(strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT,"MSIE"))
{
?>
<center><b>You are using Internet Explorer</b></center>
<?
}
else
{
?>
<center><b>You are not using Internet Explorer</b></center>
<?
}
?>
You are using Internet Explorer
Dealing with Forms
One of the most powerful features of PHP is the way it handles HTML forms. The basic concept that is important to understand is that any form element in a form will automatically result in a variable with the same name as the element being created on the target page. This probably sounds confusing, so here is a simple example. Assume you have a page with a form like this on it:
<form action="action.php3" method="POST">
Your name: <input type=text name=name>
You age: <input type=text name=age>
<input type=submit>
</form>
Hi <?php echo $name?>. You are <?php echo $age?> years old.
This section is written by Ying Zhang .
Before we begin, let's quickly go over the concept of a session and the reason we need it. It's hard (for me) to define what a session is exactly, so let's use an example that should be very familiar to you -- logging in to your computer and using it every day. After you log in, your computer knows who you are. Every action that you perform is done so with your name.
So what's so special about that -- we take it for granted every time we have to login to any system. What's the big deal with doing this on the web? Well, the web (or specifically, the HTTP protocol) is connectionless. That means each request made to a web server is independent of all the other requests. Whereas your computer keeps information about you in memory and knows when you log in and out, a web server doesn't. A web server simply waits for requests and sends responses.
Let's illustrate this a little bit:
John Doe __________ Jane Doe 1 | | 2 3 ------------>|web server|<---------- 4 5 |__________| 6
Let's say we only have two people, John Doe and Jane Doe, accessing MyMarket, and their actions are like this:
Since HTTP is connectionless, each request is completely isolated from the other requests. So how does the server know who's doing what? How does the server know that actions 1, 3, 5 are from John, and actions 2, 4, 6 are from Jane? Well, to make a long story short, the web server doesn't have to know. It can continue on happily responding to requests, session management has to be done with the backend scripting language.
What we need is a way to group together requests by the same person into the same session. This is where PHP4's session management capabilities come in. It can group together requests made from the same source (eg. client's browser) into the same session, we have to provide the smarts to associate users with sessions.
In other words, PHP4's session management can tell us requests 1, 3, and 5 belong to the same session (call it session A). Our application has to know that session A is owned by John Doe.
PHP4 adds some session management functions that make our life easier when dealing with sessions. The ones we are interested in are:
session_start(); session_register();
session_start() is used to start up PHP4's session management capabilities; you need to call it before you use any of the other session functions. session_register() is used to tell PHP which variables to track in the session. A typical call to these functions would look like this:
session_register("SESSION");
This tells PHP to start up the session manager, and tells PHP that the variable called SESSION is a session variable. You can register as many session variables as you like, but I prefer to only register one session variable called SESSION, and anything I need persistent I put into this variable. For example, I like to say:
session_register("SESSION");
$SESSION["var1"] = 5;
$SESSION["var2"] = 6;
instead of
session_register("var1");
session_register("var2");
$var1 = 5;
$var2 = 6;
Anyhow, by now you probably want to see some code in action, so create a script called session_test.php somewhere accessible, and put into it:
<?
session_start();
session_register("SESSION");
if (! isset($SESSION)) {
$SESSION["count"] = 0;
echo "<li>Counter initialized, please reload this page to see it increment";
} else {
echo "<li>Waking up session $PHPSESSID";
$SESSION["count"]++;
}
echo "<li>The counter is now $SESSION[count] ";
?>
Fire that up in your browser, the first time you hit the page, it should say " Counter initialized, please reload this page to see it increment". Each time you reload it, the counter value should increment by one. You will also see the session ID. If it does, then hurray, your PHP4 session manager works :)
So how does this work? Well, when you call session_start(), PHP4 determines a unique session ID for the client. This session ID is an MD5 hash of something (not sure what), and is either stored in a cookie on the client's PC or is propagated in the URL.
Now each time that client makes a request, PHP4 will read this session ID and load up the data for the session. When you call session_register(), you are telling PHP4 which variables you want kept in the session. Each page that loads up, the previous values for the registered variables will be reloaded, and each time the page ends PHP4 will save the values of the registered variables.
By default, PHP keeps track of the sessions in temporary files in the /tmp directory. If you leave this set to a world-readable directory, such as /tmp (the default), other users on the server may be able to hijack sessions by getting the list of files in that directory.
session.save_path defines the argument which is passed to the save handler. If you choose the default files handler, this is the path where the files are created. Defaults to /tmp.
Take a listings and see for yourself:
You will see something like this:
-rw------- 1 apache web 10 May 7 15:27 sess_6dd9ea8e61cd49cd3ad6de8c8b8885e8 -rw------- 1 apache web 10 May 7 19:49 sess_7d7f97afb6759948f554b00272494e52 -rw------- 1 apache web 6 May 9 01:00 sess_8ab78830e151add9d79b628958ce4eb9 -rw------- 1 apache web 31 May 9 11:41 sess_a3058a6bb1baf57f565c3844c8810f4b -rw------- 1 apache web 30 May 9 11:42 sess_c379faad83ad3dc8ab6d22c14dbab3b4 -rw------- 1 apache web 6 May 8 01:00 sess_cd68a5054241aff1a8157c289683e869 -rw------- 1 apache web 34 May 7 15:17 sess_cd97e41912b28c44cc0481b7d978cb61 -rw------- 1 apache web 42 May 9 11:23 sess_d1285edd0c951c70b1aec17a5f602fc0 -rw------- 1 apache web 30 May 9 11:42 sess_da93f6e19b6be01257d7a6453766a23d -rw------- 1 apache web 42 May 7 21:26 sess_e837123c1af78c538e89b47030fde337
Each one of those files is a session, let's take a look at one of them (note, you probably have to su to root to peek inside a session file). Tip: don't just cut and paste the following commands, you need to specify the name of a real file:
# more /tmp/sess_a3058a6bb1baf57f565c3844c8810f4b
You will see something like this:
SESSION|a:1:{s:5:"count";i:234;}
Does that look familiar? It should if you've ever used the serialize() and unserialize() functions in PHP. If not, don't worry about it. Anyhow, I just wanted to illustrate how sessions were stored. You can rewrite the PHP session handlers to store sessions into a database or whatever else, but that's beyond the scope of this tutorial (but it's not hard at all).
There are two methods to propagate a session id:
PHP is capable of doing this transparently when compiled with --enable-trans-sid. If you enable this option, relative URIs will be changed to contain the session id automatically. Alternatively, you can use the constant SID which is defined, if the client did not send the appropriate cookie. SID is either of the form session_name=session_id or is an empty string.
The following example demonstrates how to register a variable, and how to link correctly to another page using SID.
Example : Counting the number of hits of a single user
<html>
<h1>Example : Counting the number of hits of a single user</h1>
<br>
<php
session_register ("count");
$count++;
?>
Hello visitor, you have seen this page <?php echo $count; ?> times.<p>;
<php
# the <?=SID?> is necessary to preserve the session id
# in the case that the user has disabled cookies
?>
To continue, <A HREF="nextpage.php?<?=SID?>">click here</A>
<html>
Note: Non-relative URLs are assumed to point to external sites and hence don't append the SID, as it would be a security risk to leak the SID to a different server.
Okay, we've spend enough time on PHP4's session management, all you really need to get out of that was the two functions session_start() and session_register(). Let's get back to the issue of keeping track of users.
PHP can help us keep track of sessions, and group requests from the same session together. Now, we have to do our part and associate user accounts with these sessions. We will use a variable called SESSION["user"] to keep track of user information. When a user logs in, we will put their information into this variable. As long as this variable is defined, we will assume that a user has logged in. When a user logs off, we will clear out this variable.
Specifically, we will keep the following information about the user:
SESSION["user"]["username"] This is the user's login ID (their nick name if you will), and it is how we tell users apart from each other. SESSION["user"]["firstname"] The user's firstname. SESSION["user"]["lastname"] The user's lastname. SESSION["user"]["email"] The user's email address. SESSION["user"]["priv"] The user's privilege level.
Let's talk a bit about the privilege levels. We are going to have two levels of security: (1) normal customers and (2) administrative users. Normal customers can use the system, browse through the catalog, and do other customer functions. Administrators can do everything a normal user can do, but also has the ability to perform system administrative functions. In real life, there are probably many more privilege levels that you want defined but we are going to keep things simple here.
This is all fine and dandy, but where do we get this user information from? We need to have a way to store all the users on the system, and the perfect place for that would be in the database. We're going to create a users table to hold all our users.
Start up database server and login to database. Let's create the user table:
psql> CREATE TABLE users ( -> username char(16) not null, -> password char(32) not null, -> priv char(5) not null, -> firstname varchar(64) not null, -> lastname varchar(64) not null, -> email varchar(128) not null, -> phone varchar(32) not null, -> address varchar(255) not null, -> PRIMARY KEY (username), -> UNIQUE email (email) -> );
Now let's add a record to create the root user with the password password:
psql> INSERT INTO users VALUES ( -> 'root', -> '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99', -> 'admin', -> 'System', -> 'Administrator', -> 'root@mymarket.com', -> '555-5555', -> '123 5 Avenue' -> );
Notice the password looks a bit wierd, 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99. This is the MD5 hash of the the word "password", I won't go into details here, but the important thing to note is that it's a one-way algorithm and it always produces a 32 character string.
That's it, we have a users table to track our users, and one administrative account so we can try logging in and out of the system using the example tar file (download the example tar file from http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Commerce1 ).
To obtain hands on training and to attend PHP courses:
Visit following locators which are related to C, C++ -
This document is published in 14 different formats namely - DVI, Postscript, Latex, Adobe Acrobat PDF, LyX, GNU-info, HTML, RTF(Rich Text Format), Plain-text, UNIX man pages, single HTML file, SGML (Linuxdoc format), SGML (Docbook format), MS WinHelp format.
This howto document is located at -
You can also find this document at the following mirrors sites -
Single HTML file can be created with command (see man sgml2html) - sgml2html -split 0 xxxxhowto.sgml
PDF file can be generated from postscript file using either acrobat distill or Ghostscript. And postscript file is generated from DVI which in turn is generated from LaTex file. You can download distill software from http://www.adobe.com. Given below is a sample session:
bash$ man sgml2latex bash$ sgml2latex filename.sgml bash$ man dvips bash$ dvips -o filename.ps filename.dvi bash$ distill filename.ps bash$ man ghostscript bash$ man ps2pdf bash$ ps2pdf input.ps output.pdf bash$ acroread output.pdf &
This document is written in linuxdoc SGML format. The Docbook SGML format supercedes the linuxdoc format and has lot more features than linuxdoc. The linuxdoc is very simple and is easy to use. To convert linuxdoc SGML file to Docbook SGML use the program ld2db.sh and some PERL scripts. The ld2db output is not 100% clean and you need to use the clean_ld2db.pl PERL script. You may need to manually correct few lines in the document.
bash$ ld2db.sh file-linuxdoc.sgml db.sgml
bash$ cleanup.pl db.sgml > db_clean.sgml
bash$ gvim db_clean.sgml
bash$ docbook2html db.sgml
You can convert the SGML howto document to Microsoft Windows Help file, first convert the sgml to html using:
bash$ sgml2html xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate html file)
bash$ sgml2html -split 0 xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate a single page html file)
In order to view the document in dvi format, use the xdvi program. The xdvi program is located in tetex-xdvi*.rpm package in Redhat Linux which can be located through ControlPanel | Applications | Publishing | TeX menu buttons. To read dvi document give the command -
xdvi -geometry 80x90 howto.dvi
man xdvi
You can read postscript file using the program 'gv' (ghostview) or 'ghostscript'. The ghostscript program is in ghostscript*.rpm package and gv program is in gv*.rpm package in Redhat Linux which can be located through ControlPanel | Applications | Graphics menu buttons. The gv program is much more user friendly than ghostscript. Also ghostscript and gv are available on other platforms like OS/2, Windows 95 and NT, you view this document even on those platforms.
To read postscript document give the command -
gv howto.ps
ghostscript howto.ps
You can read HTML format document using Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet explorer, Redhat Baron Web browser or any of the 10 other web browsers.
You can read the latex, LyX output using LyX a X-Windows front end to latex.
Copyright policy is GNU/GPL as per LDP (Linux Documentation project). LDP is a GNU/GPL project. Additional requests are - Please retain the author's name, email address and this copyright notice on all the copies. If you make any changes or additions to this document then you please intimate all the authors of this document.
Submitted by: PHP code exchange px@sklar.com To get this file, in the web-browser, save this file as 'Text' type as pgsql_largeobj.lib
PX: PHP Code Exchange -
<url name="PostgreSQL" url="http://www.geocities.com/alavoor/HOWTO/pgsql/PostgreSQL-HOWTO.html">
large object access
<?
$database = pg_Connect ( "", "", "", "", "jacarta");
pg_exec ($database, "BEGIN");
$oid = pg_locreate ($database);
echo ( "$oid\n");
$handle = pg_loopen ($database, $oid, "w");
echo ( "$handle\n");
pg_lowrite ($handle, "foo");
pg_loclose ($handle);
pg_exec ($database, "COMMIT");
pg_close ($database);
?>
To get this file, in the web-browser, save this file as 'Text' type as user_pw.lib
From the PHP 3 Manual: Works only if PHP is an Apache module. Instead of simply printing out the $PHP_AUTH_USER and $PHP_AUTH_PW, you would probably want to check the username and password for validity. Perhaps by sending a query to a database, or by looking up the user in a dbm file.
<?php
if (!$PHP_AUTH_USER)
{
Header("WWW-authenticate: basic realm=\"My Realm\"");
Header("HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized");
echo "Text to send if user hits Cancel button\n";
exit;
}
else
{
echo "Hello $PHP_AUTH_USER.<P>";
echo "You entered $PHP_AUTH_PW as your password.<P>";
}
?>
To get this file, in the web-browser, save this file as 'Text' type as network.lib
PHP: network adminstrator's best friend from http://www.phpWizard.net
As a web-developer, you're probably used to such lovely tools as ping, whois, nslookup etc. But what when you need one of those utilities at a client's office and have no access to telnet? Good guess. Time to look up the functions in the "Network" section of the PHP manual.
Socket operations:
The most important function there is fsockopen(). Using this function, you can connect to any open port on a server and establish a socket connection with it. The function's syntax is as following:
int fsockopen(string hostname, int port, int [errno], string [errstr]);
So, you could use this function to open a connection to a webserver and print out the headers:
function get_headers($host, $path = "/")
{
$fp = fsockopen ("$host", 80, &$errnr, &$errstr) or die("$errno: $errstr");
fputs($fp,"GET $path HTTP/1.0\n\n");
while (!$end)
{
$line = fgets($fp, 2048);
if (trim($line) == "")
$end = true;
else
echo $line;
}
fclose($fp);
}
Finger: Naturally, you can also open connections to other ports. Writing a small finger client with PHP is trivial therefore. Let's change the example from above to query a finger daemon:
function finger ($host, $user)
{
$fp = fsockopen($host, 79, &$errno, &$errstr) or die("$errno: $errstr");
fputs($fp, "$user\n");
while (!feof($fp))
echo fgets($fp, 128);
fclose($fp);
}
Whois: Querying a whois server uses the same concept:
// domain is like "phpwizard.net"
function whois($domain, $server="whois.internic.net")
{
$fp = fsockopen ($server, 43, &$errnr, &$errstr) or die("$errno: $errstr");
fputs($fp, "$domain\n");
while (!feof($fp))
echo fgets($fp, 2048);
fclose($fp);
}
Blocking and non-blocking operations: But there's a problem with all those functions. They work fine if
$fp = fsockopen($host, 79, &$errno, &$errstr) or die("$errno: [ ] $errstr");
set_socket_blocking($fp, 0);
fputs($fp, "$user\n");
$stop = time() + $timeout;
while (!feof($fp) && time() < $stop )
echo fgets($fp, 128);
fclose($fp);
RPMs for Midgard from http://www.midgard-project.org/download/binaries currently do not include PostgreSQL , and hence you need to install from the source tar ball file .
Download the Midgard source tarball and read the INSTALL.REDHAT file -
bash# cd midgard-lib-1.4beta6
bash# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-mysql=/usr/local --includedir=/usr/include/mysql --with-midgard=/usr/local --with-pgsql=/var/lib/pgsql --includedir=/usr/include/pgsql
bash# make
bash# make install
bash# ldconfig -v | grep -i midga
Copy the header files, just in case make install did not do that..
bash# cp *.h /usr/local/include
bash# cd ../mod_midgard-1.4beta5c
bash# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-mysql=/usr/local --includedir=/usr/include/mysql --with-midgard=/usr --with-pgsql=/var/lib/pgsql --includedir=/usr/include/pgsql
bash# make
bash# make install
#modify apache line to correct /usr/.....
bash# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (or it is /etc/apache/httpd.conf)
bash# /etc/init.d/apache restart
#apache should restart!!!
bash# cd ../midgard-php-1.4beta6
bash# ./configure '--with-apxs' '--with-mysql' '--with-pgsql' '--with-midgard' --prefix=/usr/local --with-midgard=/usr/local
bash# gvim Makefile
And add -I/usr/include/pgsql to INCLUDE variable.
Also add $(INCLUDE) to $(APXS) command as below -
libphp3.so: mod_php3.c libmodphp3-so.a pcrelib/libpcre.a midgard/libphpmidgard.a
-@test -f ./mod_php3.c || test -L ./mod_php3.c || $(LN_S) $(srcdir)/mod_php3.c ./mod_php3.c
-@test -f ./mod_php3.c || test -h ./mod_php3.c || $(LN_S) $(srcdir)/mod_php3.c ./mod_php3.c
$(APXS) -c -o libphp3.so -I$(srcdir) $(INCLUDE) -I. -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/lib/glib/include -Wl,'-rpath /usr/local/lib' ./mod_php3.c libmodphp3-so.a $(APXS_LDFLAGS)
bash# make
bash# make install
#modify apache line to correct /usr/.....
# and add lines like these -
LoadModule php4_module modules/libphp4.so
AddModule mod_php4.c
LoadModule php4_module lib/apache/libphp4.so
<IfModule mod_php4.c>
AddType application/x-httpd-php4 .php4
AddType application/x-httpd-php4 .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php4-source .phps
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
</IfModule>
bash# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (or it is /etc/apache/httpd.conf)
bash# /etc/init.d/apache restart
#apache should restart!!!
To test the installation do this - Create a file in your document root directory. I usually call it info.php and in it put this single line:
<?phpinfo()?>
Then load it up in your browser: http://localhost/info.php
You should see a nice summary page showing all sorts of information about your setup. You probably shouldn't leave this file around on a production server, but for debugging and general info during development, it is very handy.
You may also need to get the RSA package for to enable SSL encryption from ftp://ftp.deva.net/pub/sources/crypto/rsaref20.1996.tar.Z See also OpenSSL RPM package on Linux cdrom ( http://www.openssl.org
If you do not want the SSL to be enabled (or if you face any problem), then download the source RPM of Apache-Midgard and edit the *.spec file and comment out SSL and rebuild the RPM.
<
?php
/* phpCodeSite (Idea from CodeSite - Raize Software)
* @version 0.1b - 20001125
* @author Sébastien Hordeaux - <
marms@marms.com>
* @licence GNU Public Licence
* Main site : http://phpcodesite.phpedit.com
*/
/*
** How does it work ?
Place a CS_EnterMethod() at the beginning of each method/function
Place a CS_ExitMethod() at the beginning of each method/function
Use CS_SendError() to log an error message
Use CS_SendNote() to log a simple note message
Use CS_SendMessage() to log a message
To log variables: CS_SendVar & CS_SendArray()
To see input data (global PHP variables) use CS_SendInputData()
*/
if(defined("FLAG_PHPCODESITE_PHP")) return FALSE;
define("FLAG_PHPCODESITE_PHP", 1);
// Start without increment
$CS_Step = 0;
CS_SetEnabled(TRUE);
// CS_SetEnabled(FALSE);
// Switch between Enable/Disable mode
function CS_SetEnabled($state){
global $CS_Enabled;
$CS_Enabled = $state;
CS_Write($CS_Enabled?"<
pre>":"<
/pre>");
}
// Add a level to the reported items
function CS_IncStep(){
global $CS_Step;
$CS_Step++;
}
// Remove a level to the reported items
function CS_DecStep(){
global $CS_Step;
$CS_Step--;
if($CS_Step <
0)
$CS_Step = 0;
}
// Log an item
function CS_Log($msg){
global $CS_Step;
for($i = 0; $i <
$CS_Step; $i++)
CS_WriteIndent();
CS_Write($msg);
}
// Write data to the target output
function CS_Write($str){
global $CS_Enabled;
if($CS_Enabled)
echo "$str";
}
// Write an indent block
function CS_WriteIndent(){
CS_Write("| ");
}
// Beginning a new method
function CS_EnterMethod($methodName){
CS_Log("--> $methodName\n");
CS_IncStep();
}
// Exit a method
function CS_ExitMethod($methodName){
CS_DecStep();
CS_Log("<
-- $methodName\n");
}
// Log a note
function CS_SendNote($note){
CS_Log("[O] $note\n");
}
// Send a simple message
function CS_SendMessage($msg){
CS_Log("[M] $msg\n");
}
// Log an error
function CS_SendError($msg){
CS_Log("<
b>[E] $msg<
/b>\n");
}
// Log a variable
function CS_SendVar($varName, $value){
if(is_array($value)){
CS_SendArray($value, $varName);
}else{
CS_Log("[L] $varName = \"$value\"\n");
}
}
// Write all global variables to the report
function CS_SendInputData(){
global $HTTP_GET_VARS, $HTTP_POST_VARS, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS,
$HTTP_SERVER_VARS, $HTTP_ENV_VARS, $HTTP_SESSION_VARS;
CS_Write("----------------------------------------------------------\n");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_GET_VARS, "HTTP_GET_VARS");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_POST_VARS, "HTTP_POST_VARS");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_COOKIE_VARS, "HTTP_COOKIE_VARS");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_SERVER_VARS, "HTTP_SERVER_VARS");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_ENV_VARS, "HTTP_ENV_VARS");
CS_SendArray($HTTP_SESSION_VARS, "HTTP_SESSION_VARS");
CS_Write("----------------------------------------------------------\n");
}
// Log an array
function CS_SendArray($array, $arrayStr = ""){
if(!empty($arrayStr))
CS_Log("\$$arrayStr");
if(count($array) == 0){
CS_Log(" = Array()\n");
}else{
CS_Write(" = Array(\n");
while(list($key2, $value2) = each($array)){
CS_WriteIndent();
if(empty($arrayStr))
CS_WriteIndent();
CS_Log("$key2");
if(!is_array($value2))
CS_Write(" => ".htmlentities($value2)."\n");
else
CS_SendArray($value2);
}
CS_WriteIndent();
if(empty($arrayStr))
CS_WriteIndent();
CS_Log(")\n");
}
}
?>
PERL (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is kind of ancestor of PHP. PERL is immensely powerful and is in use for a very long time, just like "C" language. PERL can do everything that "C" language does. You are better off programming in PERL than in "C" language!! Most of the "C" programmers prefer to program in PERL if speed is not that important (C programs is little faster than PERL).
PERL5 is fully OOP operational. Just because PERL can also do everything without OOP techniques does not mean it's not OOP.
Comparing PERL to PHP, in terms of readability and scalability, they are nearly equal although PHP has a slight advantage for those who insist on using only client side code. PERL is certainly easier to read than C due to it being a very high level language. As you know, the biggest obstacle to multiple developer maintenance is compilers from which PERL does not suffer.
PHP and PERL are equal in these ways:
Where PHP has an advantage over PERL:
Where PERL might have an advantage over PHP.