Using PHP library from C#

Requires nightly build from October 8, 2006 or later.

If you have a bunch of working PHP code forming a library you use in your PHP applications and would like to use it in C# applications as well, you’ll find this tutorial useful.

First, paste the following code into file called Library.php in some directory. 

<?
  include "ClassC.php";
 
  function f()
  {
    echo "Hello!\n";
  }
 
  echo "Library initialized: Now, you can use ".
       "classes and functions declared here.\n";
?>

Than paste the following class in file named ClassC.php in the same directory: 

<?
class C
{
  public $array = array(1,2,3);
		
  function __construct($data)
  {
    $this->data = $data;
  }
}
?>

To build the class library using Phalanger use following command: 

phpc /target:dll /out:ClassLibrary.dll Library.php ClassC.php

This command builds the two scripts into an assembly called ClassLibrary. Let’s create a C# and VB.NET console applications now that reference this library and call a function declared in Library.php and creates an instance of a class declared in ClassC.php.

In C#, the program using the library may look like following: 

using PHP.Core;
using System;
 
namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      ScriptContext context = ScriptContext.CurrentContext;
 
      // redirect PHP output to the console:
      context.Output = Console.Out;
 
      // get a representative type of the ClassLibrary library:
      Type library_representative = typeof(ClassLibrary);
 
      // include the Library.php script, which initializes the 
      // whole library (it is also possible to include more 
      // scripts if necessary by repeating this call with various 
      // relative script paths):
      context.IncludeScript("Library.php", library_representative);
 
      // call function f():
      context.Call("f");
 
      // create an instance of type C, passes array 
      // ("a" => 1, "b" => 2) as an argument to the C's ctor:
      object c = context.NewObject("C", PhpArray.Keyed("a", 1, "b", 2));
 
      // var_dump the object:
      PhpVariable.Dump(c);
    }
  }
}

You can use Visual Studio to build the C# program, or if you prefer command line compiler just run the following: 

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Csc.exe 
  /reference:"C:\Program Files\Phalanger v2.0\PhpNetCore.dll" 
  /reference:"ClassLibrary.dll" /out:ConsoleApplication.exe
  /target:exe Program.cs

And that’s it 8-)! If you run the resulting application you’ll get:

<code> Library initialized: Now, you can use classes and functions declared here. Hello! object(C)(2) { 

["array"] => array
{
  [0] => integer(1)
  [1] => integer(2)
  [2] => integer(3)
}
["data"] => array
{
  ['a'] => integer(1)
  ['b'] => integer(2)
}

} <code>

interop-with-other-languages.txt · Last modified: 2007/04/22 19:06 by tomas
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