NAME

PHP - embedded PHP interpreter

DESCRIPTION

The module makes it possible to execute PHP code, call PHP functions and methods, manipulating PHP arrays, and create PHP objects.

SYNOPSIS

use PHP;

General use

# evaluate arbitrary PHP code; exception is thrown
# and can be caught via standard eval{}/$@ block 
PHP::eval(<<EVAL);
function print_val(\$arr,\$val) {
	echo \$arr[\$val];
}

class TestClass {
	function TestClass ( $param ) {}
	function method(\$val) { return \$val + 1; }
};
EVAL

# catch output of PHP code
PHP::options( stdout => sub {
	print "PHP says: $_[0]\n";
});
PHP::eval('echo 42;');

Arrays

# create a php array
my $array = PHP::array();
# tie it either to an array or a hash
my ( @array, %hash);
$array-> tie(\%hash);
$array-> tie(\@array);

# access array content
$array[1] = 42;
$hash{2} = 43;

# pass arrays to function
# Note - function name is not known by perl in advance, and
# is called via AUTOLOAD
PHP::print_val($a, 1);
PHP::print_val($a, 2);

Objects and properties

my $TestClass = PHP::Object-> new('TestClass');
print $TestClass-> method(42), "\n";

$TestClass-> tie(\%hash);
# set a property
$hash{new_prop} = 'string';

API

call FUNCTION ...

Calls PHP function with list of parameters. Returns exactly one value.

include, include_once, require, require_once

Shortcuts to the identical PHP constructs.

array

Returns a handle to a newly created PHP array of type PHP::Array. The handle can be later tied with perl hashes or arrays via tie call.

PHP::Object->new($class_name, @parameters)

Instantiates a PHP object of PHP class $class_name and returns a handle to it. The methods of the class can be called directly via the handle:

my $obj = PHP::Object-> new( 'MyClass', @params_to_constructor);
$object-> method( @some_params);

PHP::Entity->tie($array_handle, $tie_to)

Ties existing handle to a PHP entity to either a perl hash or a perl array. The tied hash or array can be used to access PHP pseudo_hash values indexed either by string or integer value.

The PHP entity can be either an array, represented by PHP::Array, or an object, represented by PHP::Object. In the latter case, the object properties are represented as hash/array values.

PHP::Entity->link($original, $link)

Records a reference to an arbitrary perl scalar $link as an alias to $original PHP::Entity object. This is used internally by PHP::TieHash and PHP::TieArray, but might be also used for other purposes.

PHP::Entity::unlink($link)

Removes association between a PHP::Entity object and $link.

PHP::options

Contains set of internal options. If called without parameters, returns the names of the options. If called with a single parameter, return the associated value. If called with two parameters, replaces the associated value.

debug $integer

If set, loads of debugging information are dumped to stderr

Default: 0

stdout/stderr $callback

stdout and stderr options define callbacks that are called when PHP decides to print something or complain, respectively.

Default: undef

DEBUGGING

Environment variable P5PHPDEBUG, if set to 1, turns the debug mode on. The same effect can be achieved programmatically by calling

PHP::options( debug => 1);

INSTALLATION

The module uses php-embed SAPI extension to inter-operate with PHP interpreter. That means php must be configured with '--enable-embed' parameters prior to using the module.

The sub dl_load_flags { 0x01 } code in PHP.pm is required for PHP to load correctly its extensions. If your platform does RTLD_GLOBAL by default and croaks upon this line, it is safe to remove the line.

WHY?

While I do agree that in general it is absolutely pointless to use PHP functionality from within Perl, scenarios where one must connect an existing PHP codebase to something else, are not something unusual. Also, this module might be handy for people who know PHP but afraid to switch to Perl, or want to reuse their old PHP code.

Currently, not all PHP functionality is implemented, but OTOH I don't really expect this module to grow that big, because I believe it is easier to call PHP::eval rather than implement all the subtleties of Zend API. There are no callbacks to Perl from PHP code, and I don't think these are needed, because one thing is to be lazy and not to rewrite PHP code, and another is to make new code in PHP that uses Perl when PHP is not enough. As I see it, the latter would kill all incentive to switch to Perl, so I'd rather leave callbacks unimplemented.

SEE ALSO

Using Perl code from PHP: http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-perl.php

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2005 catpipe Systems ApS. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Dmitry Karasik <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>