Extensionless PHP Graphic User Interface library
Table of Contents
Why
PHP can be more than a “Web Language”, it’s a fast language, with a cross platform interpreter and a good CLI. GUI is a natural step for completing this ecosystem.
For many years, GUI projects are being developed for PHP, like PHP-GTK, PHP-QT, wxPHP and so many others, but none of them became popular.
This project aims to solve the most common problems of existing “GUI Projects”:
- The need for installing an extension
- Cross platform
- No external dependencies
- Easy to install (composer require php-gui) / Easy to use ($button = new Button)
Requirements
The following PHP versions are supported:
- PHP 5.6
- PHP 7
- HHVM
And OS:
- Linux x64
- Windows x64
- Mac OSX (tested on 10.10.x and 10.11.x)
Usage
Download the library using composer:
Stable version
$ composer require gabrielrcouto/php-gui
Latest version (development)
$ composer require gabrielrcouto/php-gui:dev-master
Now, you can build a GUI application. Let’s do a Hello World!
Create the file ‘myapp.php’:
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Gui\Application;
use Gui\Components\Button;
$application = new Application();
$application->on('start', function() use ($application) {
$button = (new Button())
->setLeft(40)
->setTop(100)
->setWidth(200)
->setValue('Look, I\'m a button!');
$button->on('click', function() use ($button) {
$button->setValue('Look, I\'m a clicked button!');
});
});
$application->run();
Now, run it:
php myapp.php
Simple? :clap: You don’t need to compile anything, just download the library via composer and use it! :smile:
Documentation
We have a Documentation Page
But, if you want to see some examples, just follow the instructions below.
# clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/gabrielrcouto/php-gui.git
cd php-gui
# install dependencies
composer install
# run examples
php examples/01-basic/example.php
php examples/02-animation/example.php
php examples/03-window/example.php
php examples/04-multiple-windows/example.php
php examples/05-canvas/example.php
php examples/06-ping/example.php
php examples/07-php-internals/example.php
php examples/08-alert/example.php
php examples/09-3d-perspective/example.php
How it works
To create a GUI without the need for an extension, PHP executes a binary with proc_open and communicates with it using Stdin/Stdout Pipes–it’s a fast and cross platform solution.
PHP <=> Stdin/Stdout Pipes <=> Lazarus Application <=> GUI
The binary is created using Lazarus (Free Pascal). After much research, I found a large advantage by using Lazarus over other desktop languages (like C#, Java…):
It doesn’t have any dependencies (except for Linux, which needs GTK), has a good component library, is compiled, open source and has a nice slogan (Write Once, Compile Anywhere).
The communication (IPC) between PHP and Lazarus is performed using a protocol based on JSON RPC. You can view the specification here.
Contributors Guide
Components names
To be an easy to use library, this project will use HTML friendly names for the components, as PHP developers are more familiar with it.
Examples:
- On Lazarus, the property “caption” is for the text of a button. On php-gui, the property name is “value”.
- On Lazarus, “Edit” is the component for text input, on php-gui, it’s “InputText”.
Compiling Lazarus App
On your Local Machine
First, you need to install Lazarus.
For compiling the lazarus binary:
lazbuild phpgui.lpr
Using Docker
If you are generating the Linux binary, you can use Docker:
lazarus/linux-docker.sh
cd lazarus/
lazbuild phpgui.lpr
Test
First install the dependencies, and after you can run:
bin/phing
TO-DO
The “Issues” page from this repository is being used for TO-DO management, just search for the “to-do” tag.
Credits
License
