Re: PHP and Objective-C

Hi, On Wed, 2013-10-23 at 20:20 +0200, Kevin Ingwersen wrote: > I have learned, that Objective-C is, like C++, a layer ontop of C. C++ had been a layer on top of C but is a completely different language. While it is mostly (but not fully) backwards compatible with C. I assume this is true for ojective-C, too > Furthermore, I saw that there was am "embed" SAPI, yet I couldn't > find any way to fully integrate PHP into a binary that had non-Zend > code inside; there is only a book. And due to my visual impairment, I > am unable to read said book. You will always need the zend-engine, if you want to do anything useful. > So I came up with a few questions: > > - How could one integrate PHP into a C/C++ programm? > The reason I ask is because, I want to see how far I could integrate > PHP into an Objective-C program. For embedded compile PHP --enable-embed and then look at the sapi/embed/php_embed.c header. A minimal C program which can run a simple PHP script might look like this: #include "sapi/embed/php_embed.h" int main (int argc, char *argv[]) { PHP_EMBED_START_BLOCK(argc, argv) zend_eval_string("echo 'Hello world';", NULL, "(emedded eval)" TSRMLS_CC); PHP_EMBED_END_BLOCK() } If PHP+embedded sapi was compiled and installed this program can be compiled in some way like this: $(CC) -otest -L/usr/local -I/usr/local/include/php -lphp test.c (untested) How to call c APIs from Objective-C you have to find in Objective-C documentation. > - When integrating, how could I expose Objective-C functions to PHP's > "C-Scope"? > > The Zend 2 API is very poorly documented; basic things like > reading/writing to and from objects is documented so poorly, that I > had to read a ~100 page long slide share. But yet, I thought that the > only way to expose stuff like Objective-C functions, or even Classes, > to PHP would be to add a PHP-Extension-like structure, so that once > the Objective-C programm was initialized, it would use the Zend API to > expose things to PHP. > Yes. > My goal is to enable access to at least the GUI functions of Cocoa, > which can be reached thru Objective-C. Using this method, I wanted to > create a new kind of framework, and combine it with my previous > project of pulling PHP files into one. I think it already made a clue > in your head if you are able to understand my - sadly - weird english. Mind that their are issues - when doing this you have to understand objective-C's and cocoa's garbage collection and see how that fits into PHP for not freeing things you still neeed etc. so deep understanding of Cocoa&Co is a primary requirement. I now way too little about that Mac stuff but see that side as the bigger problem one has to master. After that it's mostly a question of available time to write the actual stuff ... johannes