Phpgtk-application Window

Phpgtk-application Window SEM,SEO Phpgtk-application Window

PHPGTK is an extension to PHP that allows you to create graphical user interface (GUI) applications. Instead of running in a browser, your PHP application runs in its own application window. These applications are client-side only. They do not reside on the Web server. The files instead reside on the user's hard drive. For users to use the PHPGTK application, they must have the proper version of PHP with the GTK+ extension installed on their system.

GTK+ was originally designed for the open-source image editing program called the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). GTK stands for the GIMP Tool Kit. Later, the Gnome team decided to use GTK+ to create their desktop environment for Linux. GTK+ has been ported to Windows, Linux, and BeOS, and thus makes for a good cross-platform GUI library.

PHPGTK uses GTK+ to draw the widgets required in any GUI application. Widgets are things like scroll bars, text input fields, and buttons, among other things. When you start almost any Windows application, such as a Web browser, you are looking at a collection of widgets.

Widgets need to be contained in some type of framework to be useful and logical. You can't just have a bunch of buttons and text fields scattered randomly about the screen. To solve this problem, we use a special kind of widget called a container. A container is another structure that organizes the widgets however you think it best for your application. For example, the menu bar at the top of most applications is a container.

Before you can start using PHPGTK, you need to download the appropriate files. The PHPGTK team has set up a nice Web site at http://gtk.php.net. The PHPGTK Web site has downloads and documentation for the GTK extension.

Before You Install

PHPGTK still has not reached the 1.0 version, and as such I wouldn't recommend that you use this version of PHP on your production Web server. In fact, there really isn't a reason that you'd want to install PHPGTK on your production Web server. It is a client-side application!

PHPGTK is a developers' toy at the moment, and anything is subject to change, at least before PHPGTK reaches version 1.0. Have some fun with it, try it out, but don't base your company's next big product on PHPGTK 0.5.0.

Installing on Windows

Installing PHPGTK on a Windows machine is fairly straightforward and similar to installing the normal version of PHP. Download the Windows binary file from the PHPGTK Web site at http://gtk.php.net.

Unzip the file using a zip utility such as WinZip. Extract the files to your C: drive.

The following folders are created when you unzip the file:

• php4— Contains the PHP executable, as well as some GTK library files.
• test— Contains some sample *.php files that use the GTK widget set.

If you are using Windows 98 or Windows ME, then you will notice that folders called "winnt" and "winnt/system32" have been created. You should copy the contents of those folders into your C:\windows directory. Note that you may have to set your system files to be viewable so that you can see the necessary DLL files to copy them over to C:\windows.

Additionally, you should see a new php.ini file. Copy this to your C:\Windows or C:\WINNT directory. Be sure to first back up your existing php.ini file.

To test out the installation, type the following from a command prompt:

c:\php4\php.exe -q c:\test\gtk.php 

Installing on Linux

Installing PHPGTK on Linux is easier than installing the normal PHP; you don't have to worry about compiling with Apache. You can compile GTK functionality into an existing standalone version of PHP, but for our purposes we'll start from scratch and make a brand new PHP executable that has GTK functionality built in. Before you begin:

1. Download the source file for PHP from the download page at www.php.net.
2. Download the source file PHPGTK from the download page of http://gtk.php.net.

Once you have the necessary file, unzip and untar the regular PHP source file:

tar -zxvf php-4.x.x.tar.gz

This creates a new directory named php-4.x.x, where the "x" denotes the exact version number of PHP that you downloaded.

Compile PHP using the minimum options. We just want to create a standalone executable. If you want to add additional functionality, you can recompile later. For now, you just want to make sure you can create a working version of PHPGTK. Change directory into your newly created PHP source directory. Compile by typing:

./configure

That's all there is to it. This automatically creates an executable that has built-in MySQL support as well.

Once you have the php binary file, you must copy it to /usr/local/bin. The PHPGTK installation will be looking for it in that location. You need to be root to do this.

cp php /usr/local/bin

Now, it's time to build the GTK extension onto your PHP executable. Go back to where you downloaded the PHPGTK source file and extract it:

tar -zxvf php-gtk-0.5.0.tar.gz

This creates a new directory named php-gtk-0.5.0. Change directory into that directory and compile the source file. You will need to be root to perform the final step, make install. To compile PHPGTK, type the following (a lot of text will print to the screen after you type each command):

1. ./compile
2. make
3. make install

You can test your installation by going into the test directory and running a few of the scripts. X-Windows will need to be running!

cd test php -q gtk.php

A window should pop up showing various GTK widget buttons. Click the different widgets to get a brief idea of what they do.

Posted by Hodie J