  PHP HOW-TO
  Al Dev (Alavoor Vasudevan)            alavoor@yahoo.com
  v21.0, 27 April 2001

  This document tells you howto develop PHP programs and also to migrate
  all the Windows 95 GUI applications to powerful PHP + HTML + DHTML +
  XML + Java applets + Javascript.  The information in this document
  applies to all the operating sytems where PHP is ported that is -
  Linux, Windows 95/98/NT/ME, Windows 2000, BeOS, OS/2, all flavors of
  Unix like Solaris, HPUX, AIX, SCO, Unixware, Sinix, BSD, SunOS, etc..
  and some mainframe operating systems.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents



  1. Introduction

  2. PHP Download

     2.1 PHP Installation on Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000
     2.2 Apache Webserver Quick-Install (10 seconds) on Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000
     2.3 SQL server for Microsoft
     2.4 PHP Installation on unixes and others

  3. PHP Tutorial

     3.1 Primer on PHP Sessions
     3.2 Session Management in PHP4
     3.3 User Management and Privileges
     3.4 Step1: Creating the Users Table

  4. PHP Web Application Servers

     4.1 PHP Template Engines

  5. IDE tools for PHP

     5.1 PHP IDE
     5.2 PHP IDE for MS Windows only
     5.3 PHP IDE for both MS Windows and Linux
     5.4 PHP IDE for Linux only
     5.5 PHP Utilities
     5.6 Convert Microsoft ASP scripts to PHP - ASP2PHP

  6. ctags for PHP ! Surprise!!!

  7. Debugging PHP

     7.1 Debug Tool  - phpCodeSite
     7.2 Debug Tool  - phpDebug
     7.3 Debug with FILE and LINE

  8. PHP Libraries

     8.1 Other PHP Utilities

  9. Performance benchmarking - PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion

  10. Limitations of PHP

  11. Related URLs

  12. Other Formats of this Document

  13. Copyright

  14. Appendix A PHP examples

     14.1 PostgreSQL large object Example
     14.2 User authentication Example
     14.3 Network admin Example

  15. Appendix B Midgard Installation

     15.1 Testing Midgard PHP Server
     15.2 Security OpenSSL

  16. Appendix C - Debug tool phpcodesite



  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  Introduction

  Definition: PHP is a simple, object-oriented, interpreted, robust,
  secure, very high-performance, architecture neutral, portable, dynamic
  language. Everything inside "class" keyword in PHP will be identical
  to Java language (in near future). And PHP is designed such that it is
  10 times faster than Java, since there is no virtual machine.

  PHP stands for 'Hypertext Pre-Processor' and is a server side HTML
  scripting/programming language.  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 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 scripting language for web, internet,
  e-commerce 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, Windows 2000,
  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 3.7 times faster than JSP (see ``''). PHP is extremely easy to use
  and you can develop very complex web/e-commerce applications very
  rapidly in a very short period of time.  (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 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 and all flavors of unixes.

  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.

  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.

  2.  PHP Download


  ·  PHP main site  <http://www.php.net>

  ·  PHP resources  <http://ils.unc.edu/web-db/php/links.html>

  ·  PHP Code Exchange -  <http://px.sklar.com>



  2.1.  PHP Installation on Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000

  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.  And the user base of PHP is
  extremely large because PHP runs on MS Windows, Linux, Mac OS and all
  unixes.  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

  ·  MS Windows exe installer for PHP
     <http://php.weblogs.com/easywindows>

  ·  Lots of info on PHP on MS Windows platform
     <http://php.weblogs.com>

  ·  Install and config of PHP on MS Windows
     <http://www.php.net/manual/install-windows95-nt.php>

  ·  PHP Triad installs a complete PHP server environment on Windows
     platforms <http://www.phpgeek.com>

  2.2.  Apache Webserver Quick-Install (10 seconds) on Microsoft Windows
  95/98/NT/2000

  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: Apache binaries -
  <http://www.apache.org/dist/binaries/win32>

  2.3.  SQL server for Microsoft

  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 3 times faster than Oracle or MS SQL
  server.

  You can also order ready-to-go cheap Linux boxes from -

  ·  Egghead Egghead <http://www.egghead.com>, click on Auctions and
     Linux boxes, you get best deals in live Auctions.

  ·  Goto LinuxHardware <http://lhd.datapower.com> and click
     ComputerSystems, LinuxOnline <http://www.linux.org/hardware>, Linux
     hardware Crynwr <http://linux.crynwr.com>, Linux HarwareNet
     <http://www.linuxhardware.net/vendors.html>

  ·  US Land5 <http://www.land-5.com/CustomPage4.html>, US QLiTech
     <http://www.qlitech.net/products/servers/athlon.html>, US
     CompaqLinux <http://www.compaq.com/products/servers/linux>, US
     VAlinux <http://www.valinux.com>, US StoreAnywhere
     <http://www.storeanywhere.com>

  ·  In Europe : UK GBdirect <http://www.gbdirect.co.uk/linux>, UK
     MultiT <http://www.multithread.co.uk>, Hungary Leonardo
     <http://www.leonardo.co.hu>, Belgium Mind <http://mind.be>, Germany
     Spier <http://www.spier.be>

  ·  DEC alpha linux DECalpha <http://www.alphalinux.org./hardware> and
     CompaqAlphaLinux
     <http://www.compaq.com/AlphaServer/linux/index.html>

  You can also get PostgreSQL for Windows NT/2000 from
  <http://www.askesis.nl>.

  See also the PostgreSQL howto at pgsql-howto
  <http://www.geocities.com/alavoor/HOWTO/pgsql/PostgreSQL-HOWTO.html>

  2.4.  PHP Installation on unixes and others

  See the installation guide and instructions at PHP main site
  <http://www.php.net> or INSTALL file in the downloaded package itself.

  3.  PHP Tutorial

  Visit the following PHP tutorial sites -

  ·  PHP Resource index - important PHP site - has complete scripts,
     Functions, classes, documentation, examples and tutorials
     <http://php.resourceindex.com>

  ·  PHP portal  <http://zend.com>

  ·  PHP Hot scripts site  <http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP>


  ·  Simple tutorial  <http://www.php.net/tut.php>

  ·  Web Monkey
     <http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/21/index2a.html>

  ·  Dev Shed  <http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Introduction>

  ·  PHP TidBits  <http://www.htmlwizard.net/resources/tutorials>

  ·  PHP Builder  <http://www.phpbuilder.com/getit>

  In this tutorial we assume that your server has support for PHP
  activated and that all files ending in .php3 are handled by PHP.

  Your first PHP-enabled page: Create a file named hello.php3 and in it
  put the following lines:

  ______________________________________________________________________
        <html><head><title>PHP Test< /title>< /head>
        <body>
        <?php echo "Hello World<P>"; ?>
        < /body>< /html>
  ______________________________________________________________________



  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>
                  <?
          }
          ?>
  ______________________________________________________________________


  Instead of using a PHP echo statement to output something, we jumped
  out of PHP mode and just sent straight HTML. The important and power­
  ful point to note here is that the logical flow of the script remain
  intact. Only one of the HTML blocks will end up getting sent to the
  viewer. Running this script right now results in:

  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>
  ______________________________________________________________________


  There is nothing special about this form. It is a straight HTML form
  with no special tags of any kind. When the user fills in this form and
  hits the submit button, the action.php3 page is called. In this file
  you would have something like this:

  ______________________________________________________________________
        Hi <?php echo $name?>.  You are <?php echo $age?> years old.
  ______________________________________________________________________


  Surprise!! The $name and $age variables are automatically set for you
  by PHP !!

  3.1.  Primer on PHP Sessions

  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:


  1. John looks at the product catalog.

  2. Jane looks at the product catalog.

  3. John adds an item to his basket.

  4. Jane adds an item to her basket.

  5. John goes to the checkout.

  6. Jane goes to the checkout.

  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.

  3.2.  Session Management in PHP4

  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;
  ______________________________________________________________________


  because after you register lots of session variables, you tend to for­
  get what they were, well, at least I do :).

  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 it is stored as a cookie on
  the client's PC.

  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, 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).
  3.3.  User Management and Privileges

  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.

  3.4.  Step1: Creating the Users Table

  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)
  -> );
  ______________________________________________________________________


  Notice the constraints we've put on the users table, the username is
  the primary key (which makes sense, you should be able to identify a
  user record based on the username). The email address has a unique
  constraint as well because we don't want duplicate email addresses.

  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> ).

  4.  PHP Web Application Servers

  The following are available for PHP:

  ·  PHP Lens <http://phplens.com> is a rapid application development
     component which allows PHP developers to dynamically and quickly
     create web applications that retrieve information from databases.
     With phpLens, data can be presented as html tables with facilities
     to create, edit, paginate, search and delete records. PHPLens uses
     ADODB.



  ·  ADODB (Active Data Objects Data Base)
     <http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB> : PHP's database access functions
     are not standardised. Every database extension uses a different and
     incompatibile API. This creates a need for a database class library
     to hide the differences between the different databases
     (encapsulate the differences) so we can easily switch databases.
     ADODB currently support MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase, Oracle, MS
     SQL 7, Foxpro, Access, ADO, Sybase and generic ODBC.  See also
     ADODB-manual <http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB_manual>.



  ·  Binary Cloud <http://www.binarycloud.com> is an opensource,
     enterprise class web application platform It provides a complete
     set of core services such as authentication, permissions, database
     abstraction, and error handling - and a rich set of advanced tools
     built on that foundation.

     The system is deployed in a number of commercial installations and
     has proven to be robust, scaleable, and secure.  Binarycloud is
     suitable for large-scale commerce and publishing projects, or
     anything of similar complexity. It offers some unique security
     features - such as selective encryption of database I/O - which
     make it a particularly good choice for web applications that
     require a high level of data security. And it's free.



  ·  PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) is a code
     repository for PHP extensions and PHP library code similar to
     Perl's CPAN and is at <http://lxr.php.net/source/php4/pear> and
     pear-tutorials <http://php.weblogs.com/php_pear_tutorials>.



  ·  Midgard is Content management system is based on Apache and uses
     the PHP scripting language The main site of Midgard is at
     <http://www.midgard-project.org> PHP can be compiled with Zend
     compiler and optimizer  <http://www.zend.com>. PHP runs very fast
     and is about 5 to 10 times faster than Java.

     See ``Midgard Installation''



  ·  Ariadne <http://www.muze.nl/software/ariadne> is a web application
     system. It consists of a complete framework for the easy
     development and management of web applications, using PHP. The
     system uses a modular approach, using abstract interfaces for all
     transactions. This results in maximum freedom to change parts of
     the systems workings or add new functionality without needing to
     reprogram other parts



  ·  Group IT Engine <http://groupit.org> is a turnkey group
     collaboration and content management engine. It presently runs on
     Unix machines using PHP and Apache. Using GroupIT you can
     "Categorize your content", "Organize your contents into sections",
     "Control access to your content" and many more additional features
     <http://groupit.org/channel/features>.

  4.1.  PHP Template Engines


  ·  Smarty Template Engine - is a template engine for PHP. One of the
     unique aspects about Smarty that sets it apart from other
     templating solutions is that it compiles the templates into native
     PHP scripts upon the first invocation. After that, it merely
     executes the compiled PHP scripts. Therefore, there is no costly
     template file parsing for each request.

     See Smarty QuickStart
     <http://www.phpinsider.com/php/code/Smarty/QUICKSTART> and docs
     about Smarty are at
     <http://www.phpinsider.com/php/code/Smarty/docs>.  Get it from
     download-smarty <http://www.phpinsider.com/php/code/Smarty>.



  ·  Fast Template <http://curtisonline.net/theme/phpfast-templates-
     HOWTO.html> and main-site <http://www.thewebmasters.net>



  ·  PHP template Layout classes commercial, VH Layout
     <http://www.vhconsultants.com> and see this-article
     <http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/zhang19990610.php3>

  5.  IDE tools for PHP

  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.

  5.1.  PHP IDE

  PHP IDE  tools are at :

  ·  PHP IDE and Editor "PHP Coder"  <http://www.phpide.de> and mirror
     <http://phpcoder.stsoft.cjb.net>

  ·  Zend PHP IDE  <http://zend.com/store/products/zend-ide.php>

  ·  IDE for PHP scripting (Web Browser) :
     <http://www.ekenberg.se/php/ide>

  ·  Nexidion PHP IDE   <http://www.nexidion.org>

  ·  Enter in Search keyword 'PHP IDE' in Source Forge
     <http://sourceforge.net>

  5.2.  PHP IDE for MS Windows only

  PHP IDE/editor on MS Windows platform are :

  ·  Soyal, a excellent PHP editor (MS Windows)
     <http://soysal.free.fr/PHPEd>

  ·  IDE for PHP editor (MS Windows):  <http://www.phpedit.com>

  ·  IDE for PHP (MS Windows)  <http://www.pc-service-
     boerner.de/PHPScriptEditor.htm>

  ·  "EditPlus Text editor" win32  <http://www.editplus.com> (high
     rating 5 stars)

  ·  eNotepad win32
     <http://www.edisys.com/Products/eNotepad/enotepad.asp> (high rating
     5 stars)

  ·  PHP editor win32  <http://www.chami.com/html-kit> (high rating 5
     stars)

  ·  UltraEdit win32  <http://www.ultraedit.com> with PHP word file at
     <http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/additional.html>

  ·  ScriptWorx editor win32
     <http://www.softlite.net/products/scriptworx> (rating 4.5 stars)

  ·  TextPad editor win32  <http://www.textpad.com> (rating 4.5 stars)

  ·  PHP editor "ASPEdit"  <http://www.tashcom.com/aspedit> (rating 3.5
     stars) along with PHP code explorer  <http://www.tashcom.com/codex>
     (rating 4.5 stars)

  ·  HTML/PHP editor Dreamweaver  <http://www.dreamweaver.com>

  ·  HTML/PHP editor Homesite  <http://www.allaire.com/homesite>

  ·  HTML/PHP editor Hotdog  <http://www.hotdog.com>

  5.3.  PHP IDE for both MS Windows and Linux

  PHP IDE/editor for bot MS Windows and Linux platforms are :

  ·  PHP editor (for both windows and linux/unixes)
     <http://www.coffeecup.com/select/editor.html> (rating 5 stars).

  ·  HTML/PHP editors Amaya  <http://www.w3.org/Amaya>

  ·  Folding text editor (Win and linux)  <http://fte.sourceforge.net>

  ·  PHP Editor (Win and linux)  <http://www.scintilla.org>

  ·  Color editor gvim for PHP (Win and linux) at
     <http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Vim-HOWTO.html> and see also
     ``ptags of PHP''

  ·  Jed (win and linux)  <http://space.mit.edu/~davis/jed.html>


  ·  Editors for PHP :  <http://www.itworks.demon.co.uk/phpeditors.htm>

  ·  Editors for PHP :
     <http://www.oodie.com/tools/index.php?view=editor>

  5.4.  PHP IDE for Linux only

  The best IDE for PHP on linux is Coffeecup Editor as given below:

  ·  PHP editor <http://www.coffeecup.com/select/editor.html> (rating 5
     stars).

  ·  HTML/PHP editors Quanta  <http://quanta.sourceforge.net>

  ·  HTML/PHP editors Blue Fish  <http://bluefish.linuxave.net>

  ·  HTML editors AswEdit  <http://www.advasoft.com>

  5.5.  PHP Utilities


  ·  Zend Optimizers  <http://www.zend.com>

  ·  Zend Compilers  <http://www.zend.com>


  ·  Lots of info on PHP on MS Windows platform
     <http://php.weblogs.com>


  ·  PHP GroupWare Apps  <http://www.phpgroupware.org>

  ·  PHP Web Shop  <http://www.phpshop.org>

  ·  PHP Nuke Web Portal system
     <http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpnuke>
  5.6.  Convert Microsoft ASP scripts to PHP - ASP2PHP

  To convert ASP scripts to PHP  use this utility
  <http://asp2php.naken.cc>

  6.  ctags for PHP ! Surprise!!!

  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 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@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;
  }
  ______________________________________________________________________



  7.  Debugging PHP


  7.1.  Debug Tool  - phpCodeSite

  PHP Debugger called 'phpCodeSite' is available at
  <http://phpcodesite.phpedit.com> and see also ``Appendix C''

  7.2.  Debug Tool  - phpDebug

  PHP Debugger is available at  <http://www.phpdebug.com>

  7.3.  Debug with FILE and LINE

  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@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
  ______________________________________________________________________


  For a large group of files -



  ______________________________________________________________________
  bash$ mkdir production
  bash$ ls *.php3 | while read ans
  do
          grep -v  debug2_ $ans > production/$ans
  done
  ______________________________________________________________________


  And now copy the files from production to the deployment area.

  8.  PHP Libraries

  Visit the following web sites which have large collections of ready to
  use PHP Libraries. These libraries will save you lots of time

  ·  ADODB (Active Data Objects Data Base)
     <http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB> : PHP's database access functions
     are not standardised. Every database extension uses a different and
     incompatibile API. This creates a need for a database class library
     to hide the differences between the different databases
     (encapsulate the differences) so we can easily switch databases.
     ADODB currently support MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase, Oracle, MS
     SQL 7, Foxpro, Access, ADO, Sybase and generic ODBC.  See also
     ADODB-manual <http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB_manual>.

  ·  PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) is a code
     repository for PHP extensions and PHP library code similar to
     Perl's CPAN and is at <http://lxr.php.net/source/php4/pear> and
     pear-tutorials <http://php.weblogs.com/php_pear_tutorials>.

  ·  PHP Lib Netuse  <http://phplib.netuse.de>

  ·  PHP widgets  <http://www.northern.ca/projects/phpwidgets>

  ·  Generic Framework PHP4  <http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpfr>

  ·  Source Forge PHP Lib  <http://phplib.sourceforge.net>

  ·  Source Forge PHP Snippets, go and click on PHP here
     <http://sourceforge.net/snippet>

  ·  PHP Builder site  <http://phpbuilder.com/snippet>

  ·  E-gineer PHP lib  <http://e-gineer.com/articles/php-hacker>

  ·  FAQ PHP  <http://php.faqts.com>

  ·  PHP Lib  <http://px.sklar.com>

  ·  PHP Factory  <http://alfalinux.sourceforge.net/phpfact.php3>

  8.1.  Other PHP Utilities

  Other PHP utilities are at :

  ·  User Login sample:
     <http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Commerce1>


  ·  phpPDFtable is a class written in php to ease the creation of
     tables in PDF files. It requires php (4.0 but should run with 3.x
     too), and pdflib  <http://sourceforge.net/projects/phppdftable>



  ·  Data-Admin aims to provide a PHP based interface to Database
     Administration. This will not be limited to just one or two
     databases. Also, the underlying class library encapsulates the
     native PHP database calls allowing the programmer to use one set of
     fu <http://sourceforge.net/projects/dadmin>


  ·  PSlib is a PHP library for generating PostScript files. It offers
     an easy way of generating PostScript files: simple call PSlib
     functions from within your PHP script and the PS files are created
     on the fly <http://sourceforge.net/projects/pslib>


  ·  A complete collection of php scripts that work tightly together to
     create a highly customizable, dynamic and module oriented website
     <http://sourceforge.net/projects/twebs>


  ·  phpOpenTracker is a comprehensive solution for your site- and
     visitor-tracking needs. The collected data is stored in a SQL
     database, allowing complex, yet easy analysis. A powerful API for
     analysis and report generation (HTML or PDF output) is included.
     <http://www.phpopentracker.de>


  ·  PHPShopCart is a shopping-cart web application demo written in PHP
     and designed to connect to a MySQL database. It was written for the
     book, "A Guide to Databases under Linux" (Syngress Media) but is
     available under the GNU Public License.
     <http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpshopcart>

  9.  Performance benchmarking - PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion

  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
  <http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/linux/0,12249,2646052-5,00.html>
  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
  <http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/linux/0,12249,2646052-5,00.html>.
  The benchmark results are -

  ·  PHP pumped out about 47 pages/second

  ·  Microsoft ASP pumped out about 43 pages/second

  ·  Allaire ColdFusion pumped out about 29 pages/second

  ·  Sun Java JSP pumped out about 13 pages/second

  See also PHP, ASP benchmarks at  <http://aldev.virtualave.net/php-
  perl-benchmarks.html>

  Whenever you design a web site, give attention to these important
  points:

  ·  Speed of web scripting engine - how many pages per second it can
     pump out.
  ·  KISS policy (Keep It Simple Stupid!!) - your web page should be
     very simple without any fancy graphics (because web users do not
     want to wait for long and they want the information very fast). And
     information they read is just plain text!!


  10.  Limitations of PHP

  Everything has limitations or disadvantages and PHP is no exception.
  The following are the limitations of PHP (so be WARNED !!)

  1. PHP is NOT 100 % pure Object Oriented scripting language.  But in
     near future PHP may support 100%  object oriented scripting (PHP
     may imitate most of the syntax of Java language). PHP already
     imitates some features of Java language.  (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..).

  2. PHP will NOT give the performance of "C" or "C++" language. Because
     it is scripting language and is interpreted it will be a bit slower
     than the optimized "C++" programs. For top performance, you should
     use "C++" and fast-CGI with database/webserver connection pooling
     and use C++ compiler optimizer "-O3" options.  Zend optimizer in
     PHP 4 will speed up the performance of PHP and bring it very close
     to optimized "C" code .

  3. But note a point that PHP was designed for very Rapid Web-
     Application Development tool. If it takes about 3 months to code a
     web application in C++, then using PHP you can develop the same web
     application in just 4 days!!  And with zend optimizer, the speed of
     execution of PHP will be very close to that of equivalent C++
     program!! Hence, there is really no advantage in using C/C++ for
     web development. PHP itself is written in 100% "C" language.

  On the other hand, PHP has lot of advantages and it's advantages
  outweigh it's limitations -

  1. You can very rapidly develop web applications in PHP as compile and
     link is eliminated in PHP scripting language.

  2. PHP applications are very stable and do not depend on the browser
     technologies unlike Javascript applications which depend on
     browsers.  PHP will give you the freedom to select any server
     platform and browser does not know that the HTML page is generated
     by PHP!!

  3. PHP has excellent database conectivity to all SQL database servers.

  4. PHP has partial support for Object oriented features

  5. PHP has C++, Perl, Javascript like syntax features and has programs
     like

  6. PHP has Zend optimizer which speeds up the performance

  7. PHP runs on all unixes, linux, Windows 95/NT/2000 and is more
     powerful than ASP, JSP and others.

  8. PHP has a very large user base and developer base.

  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>
  11.  Related URLs

  Visit following locators which are related to C, C++ -

  ·  Vim color text editor for C++, C
     <http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Vim-HOWTO.html>

  ·  SQL database server for PHP PostgreSQL pgsql-howto
     <http://www.geocities.com/alavoor/HOWTO/pgsql/PostgreSQL-
     HOWTO.html>

  ·  Source code control system CVS HOWTO for C++ programs
     <http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/CVS-HOWTO.html>

  ·  Linux goodies main site  <http://www.aldev.8m.com>

  ·  Linux goodies mirror site  <http://aldev.webjump.com>

  12.  Other Formats of this Document

  This document is published in 12 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 and SGML.

  ·  You can get this HOWTO document as a single file tar ball in HTML,
     DVI, Postscript or SGML formats from -
     <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/> and
     <http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto>

  ·  Plain text format is in:
     <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO> and
     <http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto>

  ·  Single HTML file format is in:
     <http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto>

  ·  Translations to other languages like French, German, Spanish,
     Chinese, Japanese are in
     <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO> and
     <http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto> Any help from you to
     translate to other languages is welcome.

     The document is written using a tool called "SGML-Tools" which can
     be got from - <http://www.sgmltools.org> Compiling the source you
     will get the following commands like

  ·  sgml2html PHP-HOWTO.sgml     (to generate html file)

  ·  sgml2rtf  PHP-HOWTO.sgml     (to generate RTF file)

  ·  sgml2latex PHP-HOWTO.sgml    (to generate latex file)

  LaTeX documents may be converted into PDF files simply by producing a
  Postscript output using sgml2latex ( and dvips) and running the output
  through the Acrobat distill ( <http://www.adobe.com>) command as
  follows:



  ______________________________________________________________________
  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 &
  ______________________________________________________________________


  Or you can use Ghostscript command ps2pdf.  ps2pdf is a work-alike for
  nearly all the functionality of Adobe's Acrobat Distiller product: it
  converts PostScript files to Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
  ps2pdf is implemented as a very small command script (batch file) that
  invokes Ghostscript, selecting a special "output device" called
  pdfwrite. In order to use ps2pdf, the pdfwrite device must be included
  in the makefile when Ghostscript was compiled; see the documentation
  on building Ghostscript for details.

  This howto document is located at -

  ·  <http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html>

  Also you can find this document at the following mirrors sites -

  ·  <http://www.caldera.com/LDP/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html>

  ·  <http://www.WGS.com/LDP/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html>

  ·  <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/linux/LDP/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html>

  ·  <http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/ldp/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html>

  ·  Other mirror sites near you (network-address-wise) can be found at
     <http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/hmirrors.html> select a site and go to
     directory /LDP/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO.html


  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



  And resize the window with mouse.  To navigate use Arrow keys, Page
  Up, Page Down keys, also you can use 'f', 'd', 'u', 'c', 'l', 'r',
  'p', 'n' letter keys to move up, down, center, next page, previous
  page etc.  To turn off expert menu press 'x'.

  You can read postscript file using the program 'gv' (ghostview) or 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.

  ·  Get ghostscript for Windows 95, OS/2, and for all OSes from
     <http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost>

  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.

  13.  Copyright

  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.

  14.  Appendix A PHP examples

  14.1.  PostgreSQL large object Example

  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 - PostgreSQL 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);
  ?>
  ______________________________________________________________________



  14.2.  User authentication Example

  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>";
          }
  ?>
  ______________________________________________________________________



  14.3.  Network admin Example

  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]);
  ______________________________________________________________________


  The first two arguments are obvious, the next two are optional and
  used for error handling. The "errno" and "errstr" should be passed by
  reference.  "Passing by reference" means that the original variable
  will get modified. Normally, the content of a variable passed to a
  function wouldn't be modified.

  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);
  }
  ______________________________________________________________________


  In this example you see that you can apply any file operations (fread,
  fwrite etc) to the the pointer you got using the fsockopen() call.
  Note that the example realizes a HTTP/1.0 client - it won't work with
  name-based virtual hosts.

  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

  1. You have a connection with low latency and

  2. If the server you're connecting to is up and running.

     If not, your script will be busy until it times out. The reason for
     this is that default socket connections are blocking and don't time
     out. You can avoid these "hanging scripts" by switching to non-
     blocking socket operations. The function set_socket_blocking() does
     just that: it set all operations on a socket (first parameter:
     socket pointer) to either blocking (second parameter: true) or
     false (second parameter: false). Using non-blocking operations, the
     finger function would like like this:


  ______________________________________________________________________
          $fp = fsockopen($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);
  ______________________________________________________________________


  Modifying these 3 functions to use non-blocking socket calls is left
  as an exercise for you.

  15.  Appendix B Midgard Installation

  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!!!
  ______________________________________________________________________



  15.1.  Testing Midgard PHP Server

  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.

  15.2.  Security OpenSSL

  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.

  16.  Appendix C - Debug tool phpcodesite



  ______________________________________________________________________
  <
  ?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");
          }
  }
  ?>
  ______________________________________________________________________



