Reputation: 20965

PHP as a Desktop Programming Language

I'm not much of a programmer, PHP is where I'm comfortable. And sometimes I find that I need to do things, such as arrange files or rename files on a mass scale on my computer. And I think I could do this with PHP but I can't of course.

So I was curious, is there a way I could run PHP files as kind of exe files.

EDIT: Fairly important point, using Windows.

Upvotes: 18

Answers (13)

user3095977

Reputation:

See ExeOutput for PHP. It has excellent customization and MAGNIFICENT features. Yet it is not an IDE or something. It compiles your PHP+HTML into fully-fledged EXEs.

Upvotes: 0

Dinah

Reputation: 54017

Check out WinBinder

Upvotes: 2

SynackSA

Reputation: 889

Download Wamp Server, install it. Once thats done, add the path to the php.exe to your PATH settings. You can do this by going to control panel->system->change settings->advanced->environment variables. Edit the PATH, add a ';' to the end of the line and then past the path to the php.exe. This is on Vista, it might be different on XP or Windows 7.

My path looks like this after: C:\Sun\SDK\jdk\bin;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.0

Once thats done, you'll be able to execute a php file from the command line. You could create shortcuts too.

C:\Users\Garth Michel>php test.php

This is a test

C:\Users\Garth Michel>

I used php for years as a scripting language before I even bothered to use it as a web programming language.

Upvotes: 1

Eugene Yokota

Reputation: 95624

PHP based web apps like Wordpress and Mediawiki I think uses php to setup and configure itself. Just give IIS proper read/write rights and you can make a simple web app that does massive renaming, etc.. PHP doesn't have to always be used for writing out html.

Upvotes: 0

Joseph Montanez

Reputation: 1708

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/download/ Still use html & css as a desktop app and now has support for php.

Upvotes: 0

Leonid Shevtsov

Reputation: 14179

See the .reg file in this gist, it makes it possible to use .php files exactly like .bat files, e.g. my_script.php foo bar baz

Don't forget to edit paths to suit your setup.

Upvotes: 0

user187291

Reputation: 53940

to be able to execute php files with double click, just like normal programs, go to the command line, then type

ftype php_script "C:\path\to\php.exe" "%1"
assoc .php=php_script

Upvotes: 2

jochil

Reputation: 1074

maybe php is not the right tool to doing this and it's about time to learn another language...use this chance to expand your programming horizion

Upvotes: 0

Patrick Cornelissen

Reputation: 7958

It's not as bad as you put it. PHP may be a very good tool for string related stuff like parsing, renaming etc. Especially if you know PHP.

To use php as script you should add #!/path/to/php as first line and set execution permissions on unixoid systems. In windows you can simply assign the php file ending with your php cli exe so you can click on them or use the script with the "start" command in the windows shell. But make sure that you write your scripts in a way that it is sensible to the current working directory. It may be different to what you might expect sometimes.

Upvotes: 3