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Future of PHP Revealed 124

Posted by Roblimo from the straight-from-the-developers dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "In an interview with linuxpower.org, the developers of PHP present hot facts on the future of PHP, the next major release PHP 4.0, the license change, and what window managers they use."
jimjag note: See the Apache section for info about the latest beta release of PHP 4.0.
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Future of PHP Revealed More

Future of PHP Revealed

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  • Interesting to see that all of the developers listed slashdot.org as web site they visit often.

    PHP is going to be a strong alternative to ASP, and its good to see that the developers are being open and forthcoming about developments in PHP. Way to go...

  • BeOS PHP port (Score:4)

    by arielb ( 5604 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @08:51PM (#1526429)
    I wanted to point out that Eugenia Loli is offering up to $260 for PHP 4 on BeOS ($120 for the Xitami and $140 for the RobinHood add-on). More details at http://www.ukbug.org/ Scot Hacker is also offering $140 for porting PHP 4 for Robin Hood.
  • I haven't quite looked at PHP, although it seems a popular enough page generation system. HTML::Mason, a Perl-based system written by Jonathan Swartz was designed to work on top of the Apache Web server running the mod_perl embedded Perl interpreter. Mason is a fully componentized system and is being used by Randall Shwartz himself ! Let's see, PERL, Apache, mod_perl, Randall contributing to the codebase (occasionally), what can possibly be better than that? --Alain
  • moo.

    ok...in the linuxpower article, in the question regarding the differences between php3 and php4 licencing, one of the developers states:

    "The PHP license used for PHP 4 is actually less restrictive than the PHP 3 license. In PHP 3, commercial companies had to get written permission from us in case they wanted to distribute PHP 3 with their product, we have completely removed this clause from PHP 4."

    on the main page of www.php.net [php.net], it says:

    "You can use it for commercial and/or non-commercial use all you want."

    yet, http://www.php.net/license.html [php.net] says:

    PHP is distributed under 2 licenses. You are free to choose whichever license suits your requirements best. The first is the traditional GNU GPL (General Public License) and the second is the PHP License. If you wish to include PHP in a commercial product for resale, the PHP license permits it as long as the stated conditions are met.

    further investigation of the aformentioned "PHP Licence" indeed shows that permission from the development team is required to include PHP in "...larger works derived from, or which bundle PHP..."

    im wondering how a piece of software can be distributed under two licences, where one is the GPL which doesnt explicitly mention anything about companion licences?

    ok, forgive me if this has been adressed, or if ive missed something thats blatently obvious. im not trying to dis anyone or point fingers or anything...im just trying to quench my non-lawyer curiosity.

    --Siva

    Keyboard not found.
  • Need to say more?

    yes. perhaps you could cite some reasons or examples which would serve to reinforce your claim?

    --Siva

    Keyboard not found.

  • An addition to PHP I'd love to see (Score:3)

    by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @09:19PM (#1526435) Homepage
    I worked for a while on a web-based application, where we used ASP/IIS with MSSQL server on the backend. We would have loved to migrate to Apache/PHP, but the size of the existing codebase would have made a port too costly. I've heard of a number of other people in this same situation.

    The ASP->PHP port would be much easier if PHP supported the ASP object model. This would allow for dumb parser/translators to be written (like asp2php [i1.net]) that could work nearly flawlessly, because arbitrary translations don't have to be hardcoded in. For example, instead of hunting down how to do a redirect in PHP (ie. writing the header manually: this took me a good 15 minutes to figure out), I can just type response.redirect().

    If mindshare is what this project's after, I can't think of a better way than to get a horde of gracious ASP/IIS converts. The stability and performance boosts alone should be enough to convince all but the most devout Microsoft fanatics.
  • This is sort of a wierd concept, but it is straightforward: The creator of the software has the right to license it under any terms he or she wishes. If I wanted, I could release software simulataneously under the GPL and under a license where I would get your firstborn if you ever ran the software. If you received a copy under the latter license, you would have to adhere to it, while those who got it under the GPL would not have to. Of course, getting the software under the FBL (Firstborn License) does not preclude you getting it under the GPL and gaining less restrictive terms.

  • *sigh* (Score:2)

    by Siva ( 6132 )
    Why is this moderated down?

    its properly moderated down because (IMNSHO) its purely argumentative. the author does not attempt to justify his claim that zope is better. the claim by itself contributes nothing to the discussion (other than to possibly motivate responses such as "no, PHP is better" or "you are dumb"), hence the post was moderated down.

    you on the other hand have stated two reasons which appear to support the claim. while i have used neither Zope nor PHP, and thus am not in a position to weigh your argument, i can at least say that it has some substance and is relavant to the discussion.


    --Siva

    Keyboard not found.
  • Very informative but :
    - they don't get into the details enought. I would have loved to read more stuff about databases connectivity, gif creation and so on.
    - they repeat themselves.
    - they spent too much time on GPL != QPL.

    But I insist, it is worth reading.

    P.S. : at least there is one core hacker running win32, and admiting it. I think it's a good point :0

  • PHP4 is simply great ! (Score:4)

    by J-F Mammet ( 769 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @09:39PM (#1526440) Homepage
    I'm a long time PHP developper (since early PHP2) and I simply love this language since the beginning. Like they said in the interview, the syntax is really clear and simple so it's really easy for anyone to read someone else's code and start modifying it. Anybody tried reading the (outdated) slashdot source code lately ?

    I really like perl for some of it's strenghts but unless you have a LOT of experience with it it's really hard to modify a big project written with it (from my own experience).

    The C like syntax of PHP is really neat, well thought and emacs (vim also) works like a charm with it.

    One of the biggest improvement of PHP4 is the speed, it's really impressive. I'm working on a rather complex site, and a single page took .4 seconds to generate with PHP3, and now only .17 seconds with PHP4. It will be even better when we will be able to preprocess the files (ala java). See http://www.zend.com for some benchmarks.

    Lately a java module for PHP4 has landed in the cvs. At first I wondered why they did such a thing, but take a look at this code :

    $InetAddress = new Java("java.net.InetAddress");
    $localhost = $InetAddress->getByName("www.yahoo.com");
    $addr = $localhost->hostAddress;

    Basically it does a simple nslookup on www.yahoo.com, but uses a java class to do it. Isn't it amazingly easy to use ? Think about what you will be able to do with this extension ! And of course it can use a lot of JVM (Kaffe, IBM JDK 1.1.8 for linux, sun JDK 1.2.2 for NT and others).

    Any serious web developper should give PHP4 beta2 or the soon to be released beta3 and experiment a bit with it. I can understand someone not liking it, but I certainly can't understand someone not liking it without at least trying to use it !

    J-F Mammet
    webmaster@softgallery.com
  • I have noticed that most server-side HTTP discussions leave out all mention of Java. I'm not in the position to make informative comments on the topic, but I'm sure that some Slashdot readers are.

    These are the little bits I know:

    • Built-in session management.
    • Customizeable session swapping (session info is swapped to the hard drive if session is inactive for a specified time period.
    • Modular.
    • Cross-platform.
    • Compiled.
    • All the features of Java, such as inheritance.
    Did I miss anything? Are there any huge drawbacks? The Java Web Server (JWS) home page is here [sun.com] (http://www.sun.com/980310/javawebserver/ - if I used the URL as the link's text, Slashdot filtered out the </a> for some reason).

    --

  • I've always wondered what the letters PHP stand for, and I haven't been able to find the answer on the site. Maybe someone here knows the answer... if they stand for anything at all.

    --

  • - they don't get into the details enought...

    eh...ill bet more info like that will be available off their website in the not so distant future. someone mentioned they were in need of a detailed changes/features list.

    - they repeat themselves.

    maybe, but they interviewed like a half-dozen developers. and its not like they repeated stuff verbatim; it was more like certain people expanding on some issues. you cant expect everyone's opinions to be mutually exclusive. and its better than half of them just saying stuff like "yeah, what he said"

    - they spent too much time on GPL != QPL.

    well, it seems to me that licencing is a big issue for any large open source project. with all the wacky stuff going on in the courts, i cant say i blame them for being careful with how they licence stuff. and whenever a large project changes its licencing, theres bound to be a lot of questions from the community.

    i agree though, good overall.

    --Siva

    Keyboard not found.
  • They can easily do this, as *THEY* are the copyright holders. They can distribute this software under as many licenses as they want.

    One license, the GPL, allows anyone to take it and modify it, do whatever, so long as they release source to their mods.

    The PHP license, on the other hand, allows them to include PHP in a complete product wihtout necessarily providing source, or divulging what they do (I haven't read the entire thing yet).


    You can't take a piece of code that is under GPL and 'modify' or 'tie' it to another license... but in this case, they are the copyright holders, and the original authors. They can do what they want.
  • Will it be PHP vs. Perl or PHP vs. Python?
    PHP vs. Intercal, perhaps?
    ~~~~~~~~~
  • Actually, in most of the civilized world, you would have difficulty enforcing the 'firstborn' clause of the license, as most courts would throw it out as unreasonable.
    Certain things can not be given out by contract. This is probably one of them.

  • Pre Hypertext Processor
  • I use both on a daily basis. Both are excellent.
  • It was originally called "Personal Home Page Tools", so I guess that's what it's from. Dunno what happened to the 'T', tho.
    ~~~~~~~~~
  • PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (it's recursive). It used to stand for "Personal Homepage", but it outgrew its original use, so they hold a competition for renaming the thing.

  • Re:What does PHP stand for? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It stands for Hypertext Pre-Processor. Of course that would really make it HPP, but a while ago (when it was still called Personal Homepages), the PHP group ran a survey on their site where users could vote for their favorite "acronym." The most popular one was Hyptertext Pre-Processor.

    That's it.
  • It's a recursive acronym. It means "PHP: Hypertext
    Preprocessor". This was added to the CVS version
    of the manual yesterday; the online version will
    likely be updated sometime after the release of
    PHP4 beta 3.
  • ..That java is overkill for most things.
    As much as I love java, PHP lets you do simple
    things very easily. Of course, if you want to
    do extremely complicated things, java servlets
    might be the way to go.
    There's no "true" answer, just choose what suits
    you best.

  • PHP or ASP, not the best. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    PHP, and indeed ASP are not really great technologies.

    Sure they work; they are good for quick prototyping, but every application I have seen written in them soon become a huge mess of "include" files that all need to be loaded in for every page hit. Yuck!

    It doesn't scale very well, it is hard to maintain, and being purely interpreted, it difficult to debug (e.g. syntax errors aren't picked up until you execute the given line).

    Unless you are very disciplined and limit the php pages to very presentation-level stuff, you end up with something that is harder to understand and maintain than even c (because it doesn't have the flexibility of it), with none of the advantages (even simple bugs cause the interpreter to bomb with an obscure error message, and it is very slow).

    As stated elsewhere, Java servlets are easier to write, easier to maintain, and scale much much better. The problem on Linux is finding a decent vm for it.

    ASP/PHP has its place, it just seems to get overused. We use it in 2 web applications, and in hindsight, it wasn't a wise choice for either.

    NotZed

    PS The bit about the GPL license in the FAQ I just find bizarre.
  • OK... if you're feeling is that way, would you embrace a linux port of something like Cold Fusion ahead of php4?

  • Re:Zope is better! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @11:13PM (#1526458)
    quick guide to slashdot moderation:
    "linux is better" -- redundant -1

    "freebsd is better" -- flamebait -1 (unless accompanied by well reasoned argument, and at least acknowledging places where linux is better, like SMP, drivers, and scheduling latency and jitter, in which case Informative +1).

    "WinNT is better" -- flamebait -1

    "Win98 is better" -- no moderation, since people are laughing to hard to select from the list and click the button.
  • What would be really cool would be to have CORBA client bindings for PHP. Then you could use PHP for the presentation layer only and make your application accessible from as many languages/platforms as possible. PHP has never really struck me as a great language for application development, just for server-side web page scripting.

    I guess the ORB to use would be ORBit.

  • Re:An addition to PHP I'd love to see (Score:3)

    by Frodo ( 1221 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @11:49PM (#1526464) Homepage
    AFAIK, PHP4 supports DCOM - and DCOM is the main power of ASP. Besides that, all plain ASp objects, like Request, Responce, etc., can be easily translated into a set of PHP classes which do analogous functions.
  • It can't be PHP vs. Perl - Perl in general-purpose language, and PHP is task-oriented language. It will be Perl vs. Python and usual PHP vs. ASP, as it goes :)
  • Zope is a framework, PHP isn't - it's a language plus a set of modules. Zope's language is Python, for what it worth.
    From what I know, Zope is suited for large to very large projects, with well-defined standard site structure, while using it for small project could be a great over-kill. Also a concern is that it's way slower - just because of a complication involved.
  • If you are submitting code to the main PHP authors then you wouldn't be doing it under GPL (or more to the point the PHP authors wouldn't accept it if you were, you'd have to submit it to them under a non GPL licence and they'll release it to the world under both licences). Whether this is explicitly stated somewhere I do not know. But impliciitly if you are submitting code to the PHP authors for inclusion with PHP then you must be.

    On the other hand you could presumably fork off your own version from PHP3 released only under GPL but:
    a) You'd have to work pretty hard to keep/catch up with PHP4
    b) Unless you are providing some serious improvements your version would offer nothing over the official version.
    c) People are likely to think you are a bit of a pillock.

  • The results of the vote can be found at http://il.php.net/vote_listing.php3 [php.net].

  • Re:Perl/DBI vs PHP (Score:5)

    by Get Behind the Mule ( 61986 ) on Wednesday November 17, 1999 @12:30AM (#1526472)
    Commenting as a long-time Perl coder who likes a Perl a lot, but who has recently discovered PHP and likes it, too:

    DBI is database interface independent
    PHP not

    Bingo. This IMO is the biggest problem that needs to be solved with PHP. It supports a wide variety of databases with APIs that are very similar in function, but they're all different. We do a lot of work with MySQL and Oracle around here, and with Perl/DBI you can often go from one to the other with no changes at all (except the connection string). It couldn't possibly be easier.

    Something like DBI could probably be done in PHP. It would be an enormous advantage.

    Great Perl Module (DBI, CGI, IRC, FTP, ...)
    Few library un PHP [sic]

    That's not true. The standard distribution in PHP has far more libraries than I'll ever need. To be sure, it's not nearly as big as CPAN, but as you pointed out, Perl is more general purpose than PHP. And note that you don't need something like the CGI.pm module (an HTML-generating library) in PHP. You're programming right into the HTML file anyway, that's the whole point.

  • Re:An addition to PHP I'd love to see (Score:3)

    by Matts ( 1628 ) on Wednesday November 17, 1999 @12:45AM (#1526473) Homepage
    Maybe check out ASP on apache, there are several options. Joshua Chamas' Apache::ASP (perl, but same object model) compiles all your scripts only once so executition is relatively fast.
  • Go to the projects section on www.php.net and look for "PHP Base Lib" and phpDB. Both solve the "database independent interface" problem. PHP Base Lib handles this fine. I'm using it at work.


    --
    Simon
  • I think your complaints are unfair. PHP lets you write bad code, just like every other language. But it also allows you to write good code too. I've got hundreds of lines of PHP at work that are still very maintainable. Although it took some planning and OO design to do it, but that would be the same story if I had used any other comparable language.

    Good programmers produce good code. Bad programmers produce bad code. It's as simple as that.

    --
    Simon.
  • Is it just me or does ASP rarely give a useful error message when it barfs? It's often something like:

    "Error 8000AFDZ"
    ???

    WTF

    I'm using ASP with JScript. Decent error messages are enough to win me over to PHP. (Not too mention the fact that PHP has docs which are not "a complete work of fiction", and the fact that you don't need to cough up money for 3rd party plugins to do the most simple stuff.)

    Go PHP!

    ok I'll stop ranting now.
    --
    Simon
    Who is busting for PHP4.
  • Oops, sorry, I am sleep-posting again. Word to your manager.
  • As I understand the QPL allows derivitive works and modifications provided the original liscensce holders gain the right to redistribute your modifications.

    AND

    Any modifications you make must be distributed as a seperate patch file.

    The first clause doesn't seem to cause the community any difficulty (so some people can sell it big deal)! However the second clause is very bothersome. Suppose KDE or PHP really catch on and people decide to improve/extend the base libraries. These products could still be around and kicking 10-15 years from now just like X is. But by that point the liscensing companies may very well have faded from the picture.

    This leaves us with a huge bloated mess of patch files at the core of an expanding system making it difficult to work with. Now I understand the desire of the company to keep their product name undiluted and to recieve patches so perhaps the minor modification that the patches must be made availible on request (you can always go back and diff it) but the modified source may be distributed UNDER A DIFFERNT NAME!!

    Small modification but it could make a big difference in the longterm future of some products.
  • Personally, I can't wait for PHP4 - mainly for the neat session management module. Okay, I know it's technically been possible to do this for ages using cookies and a whole bunch of custom written stuff, but to have a nice module that actually gives you some kind of illusion of state within the stateless environment of the web with minimum effort is a wonderful idea...

  • :-)

    (old joke)
    --------------------------------
  • I am also a long time perl coder who recently "discoverd" php3.

    There are two things that I really miss in php, as you pointed out, DBI rocks. And the second thing is that the regex implementation in php3 is useless (more or less). The array and hash types in php3 is lacking the beauty of the perl version.

    Otherwise I kind of like php3 , it's really "easy-to-use", and supports the most stuff you would like to do in a web application. You get results fast and easy.

    The biggest disadvantage of perl is that is harder to get started in, it's to much of a "smorgasbord", you don't know what to pick and when you get started your plate is full before you get to the really good parts.

    BUT, if you are a profesional staff with time. knowledge and experience building something big that is suposed to be extendable, maintainable and contain all the bells and whistles I would suggest to go for perl. Take a look at mod_perl and all the zilions of addons that is available and you will understand why.

  • Actually... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I believe there is already a project to continue the PHP3 code under the GPL.

    That's probably what I'll stick with for the time being, as I am uncomfortable with the new license.

    Too bad the Zend people are horking things up for everyone.

  • OK... if you're feeling is that way, would you embrace a linux port of something like Cold Fusion ahead of php4?

    FYI, Allaire will be shipping Cold Fusion for Linux in Q1 2000.

  • A shameless plug for phpbuilder.com [phpbuilder.com]. No, it isn't mine, but it gets its connectivity from the same ISP I use. Those people who have been complaining about a lack of PHP source code and information, you should visit this site.

  • Erm...even PHP 3 was a better ColdFusion than ColdFusion is. My experiences with ColdFusion have been less than stellar -- incorrect implementationsof simple operators like MOD, no ability to write functions(!?), reusable design only with great pains. (Of course, PHP is no panacea for good design, but CF is far worse.) And as far as I can tell, Allaire has little interest in making ColdFusion a solid, stable product -- only in marketing it as such.

  • Why is this a competition?! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Any competant developer realizes that there are many tools that can be used to do a specific job, and some will lend themselves more to a particular application based on features, support, developer skill and knowledge, availablility, and hundreds of different factors. Besides, Zope is an app server and PHP is a language. If you want a comparison, you need to look at Midgard, which I personally prefer over Zope because it is much more content based. I can let my lackeys in to update styles or content without them ever having to touch or look at my code.
  • Isn't this the same thing that Larry Wall has been doing with Perl for years? As I understand it, you can license Perl under either the GPL or Larry's own Artistic License.
  • I have used Embperl and it does everything that PHP does, and doesn't require their 'inane' collage of languages syntax. Straight perl can be embedded in your html with just a few square braces. Nothing new to learn if you know perl. With a combo of Apache/mod_perl/Embperl/MySQL dynamic pages are both quick and easy to make.
    Just my $0.02
  • This is a gripe I've had for years as these hybrid "You've got your peanut butter (code) in my chocolate (html). No, you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" web development systems have grown.

    As a code-in-HTML system, PHP rocks over ASP. No doubt. If that's what you want.

    While you CAN create complex, rich applications with those systems... They DO get hard to maintain and modify, and VERY hard to retool the user interface. And they throw monkey wrenches into the mix of task delegation between application developers, UI developers (i.e. HTML coders), and designers.

    That's why I love Zope, and that's why I'm writing a competitor to it in Perl called Iaijutsu [ninjacode.com]. I want the logic separated completely from presentation and to minimize the impact of changes on one from the other.

    For a quick example: Can you do 'skins' with your web application in PHP? In other words, completely swap out the look-and-feel for another without touching any Perl/PHP/ASP/Python code? Iaijutsu [ninjacode.com] can, because it uses a template system where the Perl code supplies a set of data to an HTML-like template language. Separation of logic from presentation.

    If you don't like skins, then... can you instantly change the entire graphic design of your site using only graphic designers and HTML production artists when the Client sneezes? I, as the application developer, don't want to stay the weekend if it's only because I have to make sure my PHP code in the HTML doesn't break.

    So, while PHP is great, compared to other HTML-and-code development environments, I hate the whole concept. I'm thinking as the web is maturing, it's turing more into an application environment.

    If you're coming from an HTML-oriented standpoint, trying to make those pages do something, then PHP seems like the dog's tuxedo. But if you're coming from an application-oriented standpoint, thinking about your data and your functionality, and the window dressing later... the code-in-HTML concept does not make that easier.

  • There are so many different tools out there...because we all have out own style, we will pick the tool that (a)best fits our style (b)is required for a paying project. There is no need for the "My Tool Is Better" argument here.

    If you have a job...that pays well...and have toys, does that make you more "right" than anyone else?..that also has a job, money and toys?
  • Well actually from the doc it looks like it is not so seamless, as you have to register the variables you want to keep in the session. I have a 10 lines include files that hash an array into a single variable that is passed as cookie or as a CGI variable and that does the same, yet is easier to use (all the persistent variables are in the array, so a simple loadvar/savevar function does the trick)
  • The first clause doesn't seem to cause the community any difficulty (so some people can sell it big deal)! However the second clause is very bothersome. Suppose KDE or PHP really catch on and people decide to improve/extend the base libraries. These products could still be around and kicking 10-15 years from now just like X is. But by that point the liscensing companies may very well have faded from the picture.

    Hello,

    Pleaes read the interview a little more carefully. QPL license applies only to Zend engine when it's separate from PHP and when someone wants to use it for another application.

  • And the second thing is that the regex implementation in php3 is useless (more or less).

    As of PHP 3.0.9+ and PHP 4 you can use Perl compatible regular expressions.
  • Comparing Zope to PHP is apples to oranges. You should compare Zope/Python to Midgard/PHP. Although Zope is more advanced, Midgard is moving fast... check it out at Midgard Project [midgard-project.org]. - Paul N.
  • For a quick example: Can you do 'skins' with your web application in PHP? In other words, completely swap out the look-and-feel for another without touching any Perl/PHP/ASP/Python code? Iaijutsu can, because it uses a template system where the Perl code supplies a set of data to an HTML-like template language. Separation of logic from presentation.

    Sounds sorta like XSLT, but the other way around Have you considered the XSLT approach?

    FWIW, XSLT was upgraded from working draft to recommendation very recently

  • Nothing with Java per se, just with the current linux ports IMHO. My Blackdown jdk 1.1.7 is a real hog on memory (sorry guys - I guess it would help if Sun gave you more support), to the point where things I can do under NT or Win 98 don't have enough memory under RedHat 6.0 - like say run the Oracle installer (NT version ran fine, albeit slow, but the Linux version wouldn't run at all on different partitions of my PII 350 w 64 Meg RAM).
    Apart from that, the Java Serverlet doing all the processing on the server and just sending a generated web page back to the browser (or info back to the applet) is much more elegant and offers better control.

    Just my 2 cents Cdn...
    Feel free to disagree.



  • ASP was not out even out in 1995, PHP was. In fact there were 2 M$ engineers on the PHP mailing list in the early days asking people what they would like to see in an html-embedded scripting language. If anything, ASP is a copy of PHP.

    As for the PHP is not GPL'ed beef that some of you have. Neither is Apache, FreeBSD and all sorts of other stuff. What is the problem?

    -Rasmus
  • I have to ask how this is defined as "offtopic." My words here, of course, are offtopic, but, uh, isn't the subject of the parent article something called PHP3? :) He's right. PHP *is* powerful, fast, and easy. I disagree on the almost-better-than-sex part, but how is this offtopic?
  • Every contributor was personally asked before we made the license change to drop the GPL between version 3 and version 4. There were a couple that said no, and their code unfortunately had to be removed. You will notice that the bcmath functions are no longer shipped with PHP 4, for example.

    -Rasmus
  • PHP, ASP, Embperl all are different variations of the same idea. One major factor why people PHP so much - it is damn easy to install, while Embperl/mod_perl requires quite a bit of more knowledge.

    Not that I personally think that Embperl itself is worse than PHP. It's just the installation that makes PHP so much easier to start with.

    ------------------
  • One license, the GPL, allows anyone to take it and modify it, do whatever, so long as they release source to their mods.

    right...and the PHP License requires you to get permission to redistribute php or works derived from it. so...isnt that kinda contradictory to the GPL?

    or maybe its only contradictory if both licenses are taken to be "active". the licensing page does say to pick *ONE* license. i guess that would clear things up.

    --Siva (doh...licenSe, not licence)

    Keyboard not found.
  • Why make such a big deal about it? If it is free and open source and a good product then why should we care what the license is? Or is there something I am missing out.. I started using PHP3 since way back and I have used it in several hundred websites and will continue to use it even in the event that (God Forbid) I would have to pay for it.
  • Correction: Licence is spelled with two "c"s. As with many words in the language, the inflected forms are spelled with an 's'.

    So, your spelling of the word 'licensing' is correct, but not 'license'. The word is spelled 'licence'.

    Hamish
  • Did you try response.write err.description ? Yong Huang yong321@yahoo.com
  • We've done a few PHP sites here at TekLab, and live by it as a platform for building smart web applications.

    One of the best examples I can think of is my Totally Free Sample Library, which can be accessed here:

    http://www.samplelibrary.net/

    We developed this site using totally free tools, and it's a shining example of the power and flexibility of the PHP/Apache combo.

    The most difficulty I have with Apache/PHP though is explaining to my clients that yes, in fact, this amazingly powerful platform that I want to use for their projects *is* free, and it is fundamentally a better choice than IIS/ASP for all of their work. They just can't believe it.

    Then I show them what we've done with SLN, and it's pretty much a done deal...

  • I was really impressed with Zope but I still think they have a ways to go with the documentation. There is a very steep learning curve. Yes, I'm an OO person and a python person. But it was still not clear how to do some things.

    I chose php for my project instead and was very pleased.
  • I just wanted to make a quick response to the various voices who claim that PHP cannot be used for large projects. I think this is a very misguided viewpoint, and in my experience PHP is a terrific platform for delivering a large site.

    I wrote almost all the code for Catalyst Recruiting [catalystrecruiting.com] - a site that helps small, startup, and nonprofit companies find top college students to hire. It's not a gargantuan site, but it handles a fair amount of traffic with a high degree of customization and 99% dynamic content. It was built entirely on Linux using PHP3 and MySQL in roughly two months.

    Now, PHP3 has some limitations, and it's OOP model leaves something to be desired, but I have found that it makes it pretty easy to use objects to abstract away the interface from the logic of the program. This enables me to work pretty seamlessly with several design people who don't know PHP from their own ASP.

    Of coures, when PHP4/Zend hits, hold on to your hats. Not only will our site be able to render pages with almost the same speed as static content, but the expanded object model will really make life easier.

    PHP is a great language for rapid deployment of custom software. I'm so pleased with it, that I'm thinking of open-sourcing the Catalyst software as an add-on to either PHP or PHPLIB. Anyone think that'd be a good or bad idea?

    Eric

  • I especially love the part near the bottom where they ask what everyone's favorite website is, and everyone responds with "Oh, I just love me some slashdot!"
  • OK, I won't mention the very large and high traffic sites like MP3.com, Yahoo, and the many more that use PHP.
  • I understand the whole business/growth/decay side of things, but at this point, there is so internet application development work out there, there is really room for more than one (or ten) platform(s). There are some people out there that "require" a certain platform for their project...but there are just as many who don't care. For those who are not worried about how it works, but that it works, you just need to show them that you are able to do the work that they need done.

    I am a ColdFusion developer...it just happens to be what I am using now. I have friends who are PHP (and a number of other platforms) developers. We are all making a good living developing with our tools of choice.

    Maybe rather than fighting over which platform is "best", we could work on ways to make them interoperate...so that those who use a "lesser" platform can still do work with/for those that are using a "greater" one. It's really the data that matters...the rest is just for display.

    Check out WDDX [wddx.org]...makes it a lot easier to "syndicate" your data...(reasonably) platform independent.
  • The 4.5 release of CF looks like it will be a very stable release. Part of CF's stability problems were that it was an NT only product...and that it had to rely on a lot of M$ tech (leaky ODBC drivers and such).

    As far as MOD not inplemented correctly...can you give an example? Works for me just fine.

    As far as functions, Allaire took a slightly different path...not quite intuitive to those used to structured programming, but their custom tag implementation works very well...and is quite reusable.

    That said, it really makes no difference to me what platform someone else finds best...cause we all know that the platform we are most familiar with tends to be the "best"...at least in our own minds.

    PHP is great, CF is great, Perl is great...it just depends on who is using them...and what they have built (or will build) with them.
  • Yeah, I dig it... functionality first, then we'll make it pretty...

  • Thank you for the information!

    How ironic that the word should stem from a word meaning freedom! I suppose that licen[cs]es outside the context of software are often more like 'permits' than legal agreements designed to restrict one's freedom.

    Hamish
  • I hope you don't trust the variables which come from the outside. Otherwise, your application becomes completely insecure.

    Well, the variables are not transmistted in plain text of course.

    PHP 4.0 sessions do not store all global variables, because this would create many problem cases. Just imagine that you have an instantiated class. The session module will serialize it, and will try to reinstantiate it, but the current script does not contain the class definition.

    I agree too, but I find the way to register session variables overly complex and confusing in PHP4. Something like a single function register($var1,$var2,$var3,) would be neat.
  • People who want a database abstraction layer (and also session/user level persistence and lots of other things) with PHP should take a look at PHPLIB at http://phplib.netuse.de/
  • Amen Rasmus!

    As a long time user (1.x) of PHP, I've never had reason to even look at ASP. Sure, DBI/DBD would be nice, and I think we'll see it soon. Many developers are working on similar things right now. As they get more mature, I'm sure they'll become part of the core PHP product.

    Randy

  • Well, the docs say that the result of MOD has the sign of the divisor. This makes sense. However, the result of -3 mod 7 is returned as -3. I ran into this when trying to do day-of-the-week calcuations.

    I know about the custom tags -- they don't help when you want to do evalution in the place where you can use built in functions. For example, you can write:

    <CFSET foo = StructFind( bar, baz )>

    But not:

    <FSET foo = MyFunction( bar )>

    Furthermore, custom tags can't return values, unless you play silly games with variable names and scopes that really smells like a hack to me. The reusability they provide is at best adequate, I've found.

    I'll agree that CF has it's place -- it works as a good "plug-dynamic-values-in-here" engine. But I really can't recommend it for functions that involve more than a very small amount of complexity.

    Anyway...I could rant for a while about ColdFusion, and so could some of my co-workers. We've done some pretty hairy projects with it, and in the end, have determined that it really wasn't worth it. I'll stand by the statement that anything that can be done in ColdFusion can be done as easily, as stably, and as quickly by PHP. Not to mention, less expensively, and free-as-in-speech-ly. Which is why I say PHP is a better ColdFusion than ColdFusion.

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