PHP modules support

Home

4D v16.3

PHP

PHP modules support

This appendix details the implementation of PHP modules in 4D. The following subjects are covered:

List of standard PHP modules provided by default with the PHP interpreter of 4D
List of standard PHP modules not retained by 4D
Modifications of the php.ini file.

Note: If you want to install additional modules, you must use an external FastCGI-php interpreter (see Using another PHP interpreter or another php.ini file).

Modules provided by default

The following table details the PHP modules provided by default with 4D.

Generic modules

Name	Web Site	Description
BCMath	http://php.net/bc	Binary calculator handling numbers of any size and precision represented as strings.
		Example:
		`C_LONGINT($value;$result) $value:=4 $ok:=PHP Execute("";"bcpow";$result;$value;3)`
Calendar	http://php.net/calendar	Set of functions simplifying conversion between different calendar formats. Based on Julian Day Count.
		Example:
		`C_LONGINT($NumberOfDays) $ok:=PHP Execute("";"cal_days_in_month";$NumberOfDays;1;2;2010)`
Ctype	http://php.net/ctype	Functions that check whether a character or a string belongs to a certain character class, depending on the current local configuration
		Example:
		`// Check that all the characters of a string are punctuation marks C_TEXT($myString) $myString:=",.;/" $ok:=PHP Execute("";"ctype_punct";$isPunct;$myString)`
Date and Time	http://php.net/datetime	Recovery of the date and time from the server where the PHP script is executed
		Example: `//Calculation of time of sunrise in Lisbon, Portugal //Latitude: 38.4 North //Longitude: 9 West //Zenith ~= 90 //Time-lag: +1 GMT C_TIME($SunriseTime) $ok:=PHP Execute("";"date_sunrise";$SunriseTime;0;1;38,41;-9;90;1)`
DOM (Document Object Model)	http://php.net/dom	Use of XML documents via the DOM API in PHP 5
Exif	http://php.net/exif	Work with image metadata.
Fileinfo(*)	http://php.net/fileinfo	Detection of type of contents and encoding of a file.
Filter	http://php.net/filter	Validate and filter data from a non-secure source, like user entries.
		Example:
		`C_LONGINT($filterId) C_TEXT($result) $ok:=PHP Execute("";"filter_id";$filterId;"validate_email") $ok:=PHP Execute("";"filter_var";$result;"hop@123.com";$filterId)`
FTP (File Transfert Protocol)	http://php.net/ftp	Detailed access to a FTP server
Hash	http://php.net/hash	Message Digest engine. Allows direct or incremental processing of arbitrary length messages using a variety of hashing algorithms
		Example:
		`C_TEXT($md5Result) $ok:=PHP Execute("";"md5";$md5Result;"this is my string to hash")`
GD (Graphics Draw) Library	http://php.net/gd	Working with images
Iconv	http://php.net/iconv	Conversion of files between various character sets
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)	http://php.net/json	Implementation of JSON data exchange format
LDAP	http://php.net/ldap	LDAP is an access protocol to "folder servers" that store information in the form of a tree diagram
LibXML	http://php.net/libxml	Library of XML functions and constants
LibXSLT	http://php.net/xsl	Library of XSL transformation functions
Multibyte String	http://php.net/mbstring	Set of functions for working with strings that can be used to handle multi-byte character encodings or to convert character strings.
OpenSSL	http://php.net/openssl	Use of OpenSSL functions to generate and verify signatures, to seal (encode) and open (decode) data.
PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions)	http://php.net/pcre	Set of functions that implement rational expressions using the same syntax and semantics Perl 5
		Example:
		`// This example removes unnecessary spaces from a string C_TEXT($myString) $myString:="foo o bar" PHP Execute("";"preg_replace";$myString;"/\\s\\s+/";" ";$myString) ALERT($myString) //The string is now 'foo o bar' without repeated spaces`
PDO (PHP Data Objects)	http://php.net/pdo	Interface for accessing a database. Requires a database-specific PDO driver.
PDO_SQLITE	http://php.net/pdo_sqlite	Driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to allow PHP access to SQLite 3 databases.
Reflection	http://php.net/reflection	Complete reflection API that lets you reverse-engineer classes, interfaces, functions and methods as well as extensions
Phar (PHP Archive)	http://php.net/phar	Allows a complete PHP application to be included in a unique file named "phar" (PHP Archive) to facilitate its installation and configuration
Session	http://php.net/session	Support of PHP sessions
		Example:
		Sessions are used in Web applications to preserve the context between each request. When you call PHP Execute in 4D, the PHP script can start a session and store anything that is useful to be kept as context in the associated $_SESSION array. If a PHP script uses sessions, you must obtain the session ID returned by PHP using the PHP GET FULL RESPONSE command and specify it before each call to PHP Execute using the SET ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE command.
		`// "PHP Execute with context" method If(<>PHP_Session#"") SET ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE("HTTP_COOKIE";<>PHP_Session) End if If(PHP Execute($1)) PHP GET FULL RESPONSE($0;$errorInfos;$errorValues;$headerFields;$headerValues) $idx:=Find in array($headerFields;"Set-Cookie") If($idx>0) <>PHP_Session:=$headerValues{$idx} End if End if`
SimpleXML	http://php.net/simpleXML	Very simple and easy-to-use tools to be used to convert XML to an object that can be processed with its properties and array iterators
Sockets	http://php.net/sockets	Implementation of a low-level interface to the socket communication functions based on BSD sockets and providing the possibility to act as both a socket server as well as a client.
SPL (Standard PHP Library)	http://php.net/spl	Collection of interfaces and classes that are meant to solve standard problems.
SQLite	http://php.net/sqlite	Extension for the SQLite database engine. This engine is embeddable.
SQLite3	http://php.net/sqlite3	Support for SQLite version 3 databases
Tokenizer	http://php.net/tokenizer	Functions that let you write your own PHP analysis tools or modification tools without having to deal with the language specification at the lexical level
XML (eXtensible Markup Language)	http://php.net/xml	Parsing of XML documents
XMLreader	http://php.net/xmlreader	XML Pull parser
XMLwriter	http://php.net/xmlwriter	Generation of XML format streams or files
Zlib	http://php.net/zlib	Reading and writing of gzip (.gz) compressed files
		Example:
		WEB GET HTTP HEADER($names;$values) $pos:=Find in array($names;"Accept-Encoding") If($pos>0) Case of :(Position($values{$pos};"gzip")>0) WEB SET HTTP HEADER("Content-Encoding: gzip") PHP Execute("";"gzencode";$html;$html) :(Position($values{$pos};"deflate")>0) WEB SET HTTP HEADER("Content-Encoding: deflate") PHP Execute("";"gzdeflate";$html;$html) End case End if WEB SEND TEXT($html)
Zip	http://php.net/zip	Reading and writing of ZIP compressed archives and the files inside them

(*) In the current version of 4D, these modules are not available under Windows

Modules only available under Windows

For structural reasons, the following PHP modules are only available on the Windows platform.

Name	Web Site	Description
COM & .NET	http://php.net/com	COM (Component Object Model) is one of the main ways for applications and components to communicate on Windows platforms. In addition, 4D supports the instantiation and creation of .Net assemblies via the COM layer.
ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity)	http://php.net/odbc	In addition to standard ODBC support, the Unified ODBC functions in PHP gives you access to several databases that have borrowed the semantics of the ODBC API to implement their own API.
WDDX (Web Distributed Data eXchange)	http://php.net/wddx	Facilitates data exchanges between Web applications over the Web, regardless of the platform

Disabled modules

The following PHP modules have not been implemented in 4D. The rightmost column gives the reason they were not implemented:

Name	Web Site	Cause - Alternative solution
Mimetype	http://php.net/mime-magic	Obsolete (Deprecated) - Use Fileinfo
POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface)	http://php.net/posix	Obsolete (Deprecated)
Regular Expression (POSIX Extended)	http://php.net/regex	Obsolete (Deprecated) - Use PCRE
Crack	http://php.net/crack	Restrictive license
ffmpeg	http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/	Restrictive license - Use ffmpeg in command line with LAUNCH EXTERNAL PROCESS
Image Magick	http://php.net/manual/book.imagick.php	Restrictive license - Use GD 2
IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)	http://php.net/imap	Restrictive license - Use the 4D Internet Commands integrated plugin
PDF (Portable Document Format)	http://php.net/pdf	Restrictive license - Use Haru PDF
Mysqlnd (MySQL Native Driver)	http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/php-mysqlnd/	Not pertinent in the 4D environment

The "php.ini" file to modify (see below) can be located either in the Resources\php folder of the 4D application (default file) or in the Resources folder of the database (custom file). For more on this subject, refer to Executing PHP scripts in 4D.

Warning: Modifying the "php.ini" file must be done with caution and requires a good knowledge of PHP. For more information about the configuration of custom php.ini files, you can consult the comments found in the php.ini file provided by 4D.

Note: If the duration of PHP processing is relatively long (beyond 30 seconds), by default a 'timeout' error will be returned in 4D and the processing will fail. In this case, you can set the default timeout in order to allocate more time to PHP execution. There are two ways to do this:

by setting the max_execution_time variable in the "php.ini" file (pass a value in seconds). Warning: this setting affects all the scripts.
by calling the set_time_limit(nbSec) command in the PHP execution script that is performing the long processing. Pass the maximum duration allocated to the execution of the PHP script in nbSec. We recommend using this setting since it only affects this script. Usually, for security reasons, it is preferable to keep a lower timeout value for PHP scripts.

4D v16.3

PHP modules support