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• dreamingmonkey
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Nov 25, 2007
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 166

  Posted: Jul 31, 2008 - 05:49 PM

  I know this is a strange one, but here's what I'm up against. I'm looking for a program that will take a PHP script and "compile" it with PHP into an .exe file for distribution to a Windows box. I've used something similar for Perl before and there are a couple references to them online, but I haven't found one that actually works. Now, I'm sure you're asking yourself why on Earth I would want something like that? Well...
  
  I've adapted Pagesetter to handle classified ads (and a ton of other premium content) for a local news site I'm creating. A buddy of mine who owns a gas station here in town would like to become a payment center for the news site, so when someone wants to buy an ad but doesn't want to pay online, (s)he can come into the station and pay. Having people come into my office to pay isn't really practical, since I work from 10pm to 7am Sunday through Thursday night and a few odd hours during the day as time allows.
  
  My real goal here is to ensure that my customers' ads get placed on the site as soon as they've paid for them. To that end, I want to create a program that sits on the station's cash register (a Windows XP box) next to their POS system with the ability to log into my site and trigger the last workflow step for the ad document (mark it paid and put it online). Ideally, this would be triggered by simply having the clerk scan a barcode that I have printed on the invoice. I can do this in about a dozen different ways in Linux, but I've never written a Windows program. I barely even have a working Windows box.
  
  So, my first thought was to write it as a PHP script and use GTK+ to give it a pretty user interface. I suppose I can install PHP on their cash register and run it that way. But it would be really great if I could wrap it up as a nice, neat executable file and just slap it in their Startup folder so that it's always at their fingertips. This is especially true because down the road, I would like to be able to distribute this solution to payment centers across the country. You see, my site is actually a "local news site engine" that will allow anyone to easily start and maintain his or her own home town news site. I also have another project that could eventually benefit from something similar.
  
  
  So, if anyone out there has any ideas, I'm listening. Thanks in advance.
  
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• Guite
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
  • Registered: Jan 19, 2003
  • Last visit: Apr 06, 2010
  • Posts: 442

  Posted: Jul 31, 2008 - 05:52 PM

  You might take a look at the bcompiler extension: http://de.php.net/manual/en/book.bcompiler.php
  
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• dreamingmonkey
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Nov 25, 2007
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 166

  Posted: Jul 31, 2008 - 05:59 PM

  Quote

  
  This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension?including the names of its functions and any other documentation surrounding this extension?may change without notice in a future release of PHP. This extension should be used at your own risk.
  

  
  
  That sounds just about perfect. Thanks!
  
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