PHP for desktop, is it worth it?

PHP is described on Wikipedia as:

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages.

Taking this into consideration, apps divide in 3 category: web, command line and desktop.

For the Web, PHP is the most popular open-source (and not only) programming language.

PHP CLI

PHP CLI (Command Line Interface) I find it very interesting, even though is not used at it’s full potential. A lot of developers prefer shell scripting or Perl with no real reason. I’ve been playing around with this tool and I liked the result.

Important frameworks like: Zend, Symfony or Cake PHP are using PHP CLI to generate projects, models, CRUD or other features that can be easily used with a command line.

In the Windows environment the command line is not exactly popular, but in Linux is almost imperative. After all what’s the point of using shell scripting when you can use a powerful language with a lot of features like PHP?

But CLI is not limited just to the command line, it is usually used for cronjobs, pipes, socket-servers etc.

PHP-GTK

When it comes to PHP and desktop usually people thing about PHP-GTK. What do I thing about the project? Is not dead, like it says on the official website, but is not exactly alive. The reason? Gtk is not exactly simple. If you come from the Linux environment probably is not that difficult, but if you usually work on the web is not exactly html… Nevertheless there is a community that keep this project alive.

Nevertheless, it allows developers to build desktop apps in PHP, compatible with a wide variety of operating systems.

But there is an issue, the resulting apps are not exactly compiled code, they must run using a PHP virtual machine. Here is the issue, how do you distribute the app? If you have a small app of only few lines of code, to distribute it with a virtual machine is a little complicated… Also the code is visible, of course there are methods to solve this issue, but there aren’t exactly simple.

This is probabily the most popular PHP platform for desktop, if you can say that about this environment.

The documentation is pretty big, it was taken from the C++ version. Is not as well polished like the PHP manual for instance, but I believe is sufficient.

Winbinder

Compared to PHP-GTK it has an disadvantage, it only works on MS Widows operating system. The advantage is that it has a much simpler API. If I had to choose a PHP platform for desktop, probably I would go for Winbinder. Unfortunately is in the same state, is not dead but is not exactly alive. It also have the support of a community, but without any particular special results.

The issue with the compiled code is found here also, and even more the issue with platform distribution is just as bad. I firmly believe that if you want to develop an app using this platform, to make it work on your computer is the easiest part, to make it work on someone else’s computer is the real issue…

The documentation is pretty small, because of the API. But simplicity is good when it comes to programming, that means you can easily build pretty interesting apps.

Compilers

There a few, and the majority of them have some issue because they use old PHP versions of even old GTK. I’ve spend many hours on Google trying to find some reals solution but with no success.

Most popular compilers:

• Bambalam – works well with CLI and Winbinder. But it has a great disadvantage: it’s only compatible with PHP 4.4.4, and I believe that says it all. Anyway I believe it was the most interesting solution, unfortunately to old (the last version was released in 2006).
• PriadoBlender – works well with PHP-GTK and CLI, but is not very stable. The last (beta) version was released in 2007, and since then nothing new was ever heard from it. Probably if that version would be updated  it would help a lot the PHP-GTK project.

Conclusion

When it comes to Web, everything is great!

PHP as a command line tool is ever more popular and more tools appear each day!

In the desktop environment is a “the living dead” sensation… This projects are not dead but there not exactly alive. Of course there are other solution for PHP on desktop which I did not mention, but there are in about the same state. Probably a new approach would help, something more attractive for web developers and those passionate about this language.

After my second little project, I’m back with my opinion on Adobe AIR!

Working with Adobe AIR I had a revelation, in 2004 John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly presented the concept “Web as Platform”. These days, using the Web as a platform we can develop desktop applications. Basically we’ve left an environment to come back to it with a new perspective.

If the first time I had only 3 days at my disposal, this time I wasn’t constrained. During this time I had the opportunity to discover some of the features, like NativeMenu and the support for SQLite.

I believe that SQLite has the purpose of compensating for the storing possibility that are not available on this platform, like cookies. Of course, SQLite is using a database, and the storing is way superior to the traditional Web.

But way choose Adobe AIR compared to other platforms like Java or C#? Because it is simple! I don’t believe that Adobe AIR was intended to be a tool for developing large applications, even though only time will tell if that’s possible. This is a great tool for small to medium scale apps, which  can bring something extra to the Web. For instance in my app I had an alert system, I thought what I would like next to what I already have on the Web. With this alerts I don’t have to check all the time what’s new. Just as well I believe features like chats can be implemented or similarly features, after all if it can be done on the Web, it can be done here.

What Adobe AIR has is a very interesting distribution system, basically the platform is distributed with Adobe Acrobat Reader, thing that can make it available even on your computer without even knowing.

What Adobe AIR does not have, and I thing it would be useful, is a system for accessing COM objects for instance, possibility to access different database systems different then SQLite, which is quite simple.

Another feature that I would like is the possibility to access Adobe Flesh features from JavaScript. I know, I should use Flash if there are Flash features, but I prefer JavaScript as a platform. Probably the reason this features are not available in JavaScript is because this language has the HTML 5 features, like: Canvas and Audio, which somehow compensate with Flash features that are not available in JavaScript by default.

Adobe AIR 2 which is in beta version for the moment, will probably solve some of the need to access the system resources.

In my opinion, Adobe AIR is the platform on which a Web developer can develop desktop apps with ease!

CodeIgniter is an open-source PHP framework build for RAD.
The book CodeIgniter 1.7 from PacktPublishing, written by  Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton is trying to build an overall image of of the CodeIgniter framework,  as an addintion to the user guide.

The book is not a reference, and that becomes obvious with every chapter, each time a new feature of the CodeIgniter framework is introduced the user is directed to the corresponding page of the module in the user guide or wiki. Even more, suggestions are made for alternative modules that can achieve a similar task in a different way.

Authors say that only minimal knowledge of PHP is necessary to read this book, a promise that is hard to keep in my opinion, usually books that target novice to medium skill readers are saying something like that. To my surprise they ware right, the reader only needs PHP4 knowledge. And when it comes to OOP not even PHP5 features are required, just the PHP4 object model. In this book even the copping objects by reference is described! Of course copping objects by reference is no longer a relevant issue with PHP5, but taking this in to consideration that is an PHP4 framework it was a good idea to mention and explain it. It seems like there are still PHP4 server on the Internet… that is just sad…

Reading the book flashbacks came to my mind with pieces of code written directly in PHP and the hell of debugging them, trying to understand other peoples code… what times… horribly of course. The reasoning behind this concepts of re usability in a framework is just  great: “Possibly you like typing regex. Some people like lying on a bed of nails…”. When a developer, especially a beginner, is reading something like this it makes him understand that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time, but just use solutions already developed by others.

Comparing between different available solutions I believe is the most funny part of a book like this. Is difficult or even impossible to compare for instance Zend Framework or even CakePHP with CodeIgniter. After all almost all frameworks say the same thing, just download and start working. Personally when I need to use a module from Zend Framework I just load the autoloader and get to work. The comparison shows CodeIgniter as a winner for most users, as expected, the reasoning behind that claim is pretty honest.  Afterall is a small framework and does not have complex features like autogenerating CRUD. I remember a Java book where the author was representing the fact that C++ is faster then Java as a disadvantage, of course was just silly.

I sometimes had the impression that the terms were wrongly defined. The authors are using “small” mistakes in terms to explain what’s actually happening in the background. When you are working with MVC frameworks some of the notions are simple and obvious, but for a developer that’s not familiar with that terms there are quite hard to comprehend.

And to continue with the mistakes in the book, I’ve found a few. Quite a difficult moment when you start learning something new. Fortunately there are quite obvious because they result in errors, and if you read chapter after chapter you’ll know what the issue is and how to fix it.

Examples are pretty consistent and well documented. When a new concept or module is introduced it is fully explained in detail.

The resulting apps are not very complex, for instance at the end of the book there isn’t a full complex app like a CMS, rather modules and the way there are combined is explained. The user will have to decide in the end how will his app look and feel. For instance in chapter 13 pagination and ordering is explained. When pagination is used everything is OK, but when ordering is introduced the pagination begin to slip. It took me about 5-10 minutes to fix the issue, but it would have been nice for the authors to fix the issue themselves.

Overall is a good book, especially for users that have no prior knowledge of CodeIgniter, is just like is presented by the authors, a book for developers that want more productivity in there work or just what to see what other tools are out there.  The book does not present full solutions like a CMS or a shopping cart, but rather what this framework has to offer.

An advanced developer can understand from this book the structure of the CodeIgniter framework, possibly to compare it to other popular frameworks, without loosing time with complex and irrelevant examples.

More then an year ago I wrote a blog, where I was telling that Google doesn’t know where I live.

The issue was that Goole Maps had a very poor coverage for Romania, and Yahoo! Maps is a way better alternative for this part of Europe. I still believe that Yahoo! Maps is a better alternative but I was surprised by one thing. Occasionally I’ve visited Google Maps to see how things are going with the coverage of Bucharest, basically it was represented a single way to cross the city from highway A1 to A2, and nothing else.

About a month ago, I went back to check what was new because I needed to build an Romanian tourism app and… surprise, surprise, even though the satellite photos are of lower quality now, I could find my street using the search and even the block where I live. Even more I was able to calculate alternative routes to various  locations in Bucharest.

It looks like Google has began to have a little more interest in this part of central Europe, now allowing for a real competition with Yahoo!. This is a great advantage for Android phone users who use Google Maps for there GPS app. Few years ago, to user Google Maps in Romania it was completely useless, you could see the satellite images, but that was about all, you could not find useful addresses, and if there ware marked on the map you could not automatically find a route to them.

Eventually I used Google Maps for my app, even though I still believe that Yahoo! Maps is a good alternative, as far as quality and API. Speaking of API, both of them seem ok and I don’t king that’s a criteria to difference them between the two giants.

A thing a little shocking about Google knowing where I live it was on an evening when curios to see if my GPS works on my mobile phone I went on my balcony. Everything was ok, it found me within 50 and 100m on the Google map, using my wireless connection for the data transfer. Another evening a friend came over to tried the same thing, using the same connection to the Internet, same Google Maps app, and he was found within 100m.

Nothing unusual in theory, but everything changed  the next day when he told me that his phone didn’t have GPS, and what we ware seeing was the date from the last time I connected my device… so Google now knows where I live… literary…

It seems like Oracle received the unconditional approval from EU to by Sun according to Yahoo! News.

About and year and a half ago I was considering the MySQL Certified Developer exam. Now I’ve become Sun MySQL Certified Developer and it seems like I’ll even become Oracle MySQL Certified Developer. And all of this with no extra charge! 🙂

The good part is that we’ll become Oracle developers even if we don’t want or plan to (ok, is not exactly Oracle, but one of there products).