Re: About CLI PHP

Hi!

I think it would be a good idea to make the PHP usage within CLI something different than PHP usage with a web server. I mean that users often get confused when I say, for example, my FTP server is 100% pure & native PHP. They think about things like phpMyExplorer, etc... and they don't even think that it is possible to do a whole multi-child FTP server with PHP. It's maybe too early but I think it would be a good idea to make a separate website (like for pear, gtk, ...) about this usage of PHP. Users using php from a console will probably confuse users starting php on some free hoster to try to make dynamic content. About 4 years ago, I wrote some code for PHP to run perfectly with xinetd (using xinetd's environement to find remote ip, remote port, ...) and I called that PHP/NC (I forgot what NC mean). With that, I created the first POP/SMTP server in php (storing mails in a MySQL database ... yes it was a big mistake... much slower than files when you have big mails). Now I use a little thing I wrote called phpinetd: it will listen to ports using the socket_* functions, and run functions when a command is received. It supports TCP and should work with UDP, also it have two "cores": one for UNIX system, using fork() and one for other systems, which isn't forking at all and using select() to run only when needed. I think this software may help people starting doing their first "PHP Daemon" outside Apache (I also use two classes I wrote : tcpsocket and udpsocket. It makes really easy creating a socket, listening, sending data, etc..) and I'm still improving it (but keeping a backward compatibility). I think the best would be to include that near php.net . Using sourceforge is also an option but I don't feel like it would be the best. That's why today, I'm writing to you :)

This would probably be well suited in PEAR, which is setup exactly for these kind of utilities (wether they are web or command line oriented). You might also try to attarct more attention to your package via the major online PHP news sources... Goba