Seamless Integration of PHP and .NET for Enhanced Application Development

1. Integration between PHP and .NET Applications Svetlin Nakov National Academy for Software Development academy.devbg.org

2. Contents • PHP Interoperability • PHP and COM • Writing WordPress Plug-in in C# • Phalanger: Running PHP in .NET CLR

3. PHP Interoperability

4. PHP Interoperability • What is Interoperability? • Ability to work together with other products, frameworks, languages and platforms • PHP Interoperability • Call external process – shell_exec() function • Invoke native C/C++ code (.so / .dll libraries) • dl() function in PHP (load extension library) • SWIG – http://www.swig.org/ • COM operability (in Windows) • Web services (REST / SOAP)

5. PHP and COM

6. What is COM? • Component Object Model (COM) • Microsoft Windows built-in technology • Inter-process communication between components and applications • Example: Display Adobe Acrobat PDF in Internet Explorer • Object-oriented approach • Allows dynamic object creation and method invocation and properties / events access • Language-neutral technology

7. Creating COM Component in .NET Framework and C# • Define the COM dispatch interface: • Define the COM implementation class: [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIDispatch)] public interface ICalculator { int Sum(int a, int b) } namespace PlayingWithCOM { [ComVisible(true)] [Guid("38AADE7B-79B8-31A1-B365-22C6AAE5232C")] public class Calculator : ICalculator { public int Sum(int a, int b) { return a+b; } } }

8. Register COM Component Assembly in the Registry • Sign the assembly with strong name: • Install the assembly in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC): • Register the assembly as COM component in Windows registry: [assembly:AssemblyKeyFile(@"secret-key.snk")] gacutil -i PlayingWithCOM.dll regasm PlayingWithCOM.dll

9. Using COM Objects from PHP Script • Creating COM object and invoking method from PHP: $calc = newCOM("PlayingWithCOM.Calculator"); $result = $calc->Sum(5, 6); echo $result;

10. Writing WordPress Plug-ins in C#

11. WordPress on IIS • Running WordPress in IIS • Run PHP on IIS: • Install FastCGI ISAPI extension for IIS • Install and configure PHP for Windows • Alternatively use Web Platform Installer • Install and configure MySQL for Windows • Configure WordPress and URL rewriting: • ISAPI_Rewrite in IIS 5.1/6 • Microsoft URL Rewrite for IIS 7

12. Creating WordPress Plug-in • We want to create WordPress plug-in for downloading a blog post as PDF document • Converting HTML page to PDF is not straightforward problem! • We prefer to implement this in C# • Use Internet Explorer through COM • Open the web page URL in Internet Explorer • Take the entire page as graphics image • Cut the image into pages and write them to PDF document with PdfSharp • Invoke the C# class from PHP through COM

13. Creating WordPress Plug-in (2) • We want to add a parameter "?pdf" to all WordPress URLs to produce PDF output • We hook the WordPress action "init" • In the action handler invoke the C# based Web2Pdf converter add_action('init', 'init_action_handler'); $web2pdf = new COM("Web2Pdf.WebPageToPDFGenerator"); $pdf_base64 = $web2pdf->GeneratePdfFromWebPageAsBase64($url);

14. Creating WordPress Plug-In in C# - Web2Pdf Converter Live Demo

15. Phalanger The PHP Language Compiler for .NET

16. Phalanger Project: Running PHP in .NET Framework • Phalanger Project • Open source PHP compiler for .NET CLR • Web site: http://www.php-compiler.net • Compiles PHP code to MSIL just like C# • Implements all standard PHP functions • Two modes of execution: • Classical PHP execution model – run existing applications like phpBB, Drupal, etc. • ASP.NET mode – use ASP.NET with PHP language – mix .NET and PHP functions

17. Integration between PHP and .NET Applications Questions?