Running PHP on desktop?

Not for 'how-to' coding questions but PHP theory instead, this forum is here for those of us who wish to learn about design aspects of programming with PHP.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
steve9876
Forum Newbie
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:34 pm

Running PHP on desktop?

Post by steve9876 »

I hope this is the right forum for this question.

Is it possible, or feasible, to run PHP as a desktop application, independent of a server?

My immediate interest is to read data from a text file, and construct web pages incorporating that data. PHP's facilities would be well-suited to this task.

I expect I could use Perl, but then I'd have to learn Perl. Or I could run the program on the server, but I'd have to upload the text file to the server, and download the resulting web pages.

I've seen references to "GTK", but that sounds like way more trouble than it's worth.

If it is possible, which version(s) of PHP will run under Win98?
User avatar
jackpf
DevNet Resident
Posts: 2119
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:22 pm
Location: Ipswich, UK

Re: Running PHP on desktop?

Post by jackpf »

This sounds easily doable in C...however, that'd require knowledge of C. It's very similiar to PHP....


But yeah, I imagine there probably is a way. I haven't attempted this myself, but I found some links you may find of use:
http://gtk.php.net/
http://www.php-scripts.com/20060710/88/

There are plenty more on google.
User avatar
jackpf
DevNet Resident
Posts: 2119
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:22 pm
Location: Ipswich, UK

Re: Running PHP on desktop?

Post by jackpf »

In fact, check out this post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=104716&p=559840#p559840
I just tested the first and it works.
steve9876
Forum Newbie
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:34 pm

Re: Running PHP on desktop?

Post by steve9876 »

Thanks, guys.

It turns out there really isn't a problem after all. I installed PHP on my Win98 machine, and it seems to work just fine as-is, without GTK or anything else. In fact, I wrote the program I mentioned, and it's working fine.

The only "problem" is all the options during installation. I have no idea what most of them are.
User avatar
jackpf
DevNet Resident
Posts: 2119
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:22 pm
Location: Ipswich, UK

Re: Running PHP on desktop?

Post by jackpf »

What options?

You should be ok with defaults anyway.
Post Reply