server-side browser via php?

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
clarkepeters
Forum Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 10:50 pm

server-side browser via php?

Post by clarkepeters »

I have an unusual problem that has to do with the fact that I program in xforms and xhtml and need to run an xforms engine via firefox. Without getting into the details of why, let me ask you all about a browser processing approach.

Would it be possible to set up firefox on a server and somehow process my web pages with firefox via php.

I was thinking something like this.
1. User requests my page ( page2.php)
2. page2.php gets the associated xthml page on the server, say page2.xhtml
3. php runs page2.xthml through firefox engine and creates the rendered version
4. php sends rendered version back to the client browser

or something like that.
User avatar
Christopher
Site Administrator
Posts: 13596
Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2004 7:54 pm
Location: New York, NY, US

Re: server-side browser via php?

Post by Christopher »

Yes possible.

You might want to see what they did here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/concentre-xml/
(#10850)
clarkepeters
Forum Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 10:50 pm

Re: server-side browser via php?

Post by clarkepeters »

Thanks Christopher,
Glad to know it's at least possible, and thanks for the link. I'll look into concentre. There are other xforms processors/converters as well but my problem is that switching from the mozilla-xforms engine to another often requires a serious amount of debugging, especially for the large size app that I have. Since I have already put 5+ years into its development and it runs just dandy as-is on mozilla-xforms, I was hoping not to have to go through that debugging process and thought it might be easier to run a server-side solution off the mozilla-engine. The reason I can't go client side is that mozilla-xforms development can't always keep pace with the latest firefox release, and this puts me at odds with my clients who want to run my apps while also running the latest firefox.

I'm a web app guy, not a server-side guru, so if anyone has any general directions, speciall php functions that come to mind, or links or whatnot for getting me started I would soooo much appreciate it.
Post Reply