May - 2017

How does the Runtime Converter compare to Facebook's HipHop?

How does the Runtime Converter compare to Facebook's HipHop?

On the face of it, HipHop, which is Facebook's source code converter from PHP into C++, would be a very similar project to the Runtime Converter which converts PHP into Java/Swift/C#. In fact, HipHop serves as an excellent example of how it is possible to convert PHP and have it run flawlessly. Where HipHop and the Runtime Converter differ is in their primary goals. The primary goal of HipHop was to speed up PHP and reduce costs. The Runtime Converter also has this potential,

How does the Runtime Converter compare to Quercus?

Quercus is a Java implementation of PHP 5 developed by Caucho and implemented inside of their application server called "Resin". The most significant difference between Quercus and the Runtime Converter is that Quercus is a way for you to run PHP on the JVM, rather than a way for you to convert your PHP source code into Java. It is offers a way for you to call Java from PHP, but it is not a way to convert your site from PHP into Java. The Runtime Converter not only compiles t

How does the Runtime Converter work?

The Runtime Converter produces code (right now in Java) that is automatically converted from PHP. It has a dependency on a library of helper functions and on the PHP runtime library itself, which is used to provide the library of standard functions. When the user calls a method from one of the user-space classes that they converted, this call is made in the target language. The functions, classes, and include files from their project are all converted to code in the target la

Runtime Converter Unit Testing

One of the main goals of the runtime converter is to be able to run converted PHP code on another platform with exactly the same behavior as the souce php code. To make this work, and to prevent regressions from constant changes, we have invested in developing a large number of unit tests. Some of these relate to the C++ wrapper around the php standard library, but the majority of them are actually written in PHP. In fact, we run a large number of unit tests directly from the

Why do people complain about PHP?

The reason that people complain about PHP as a language is that it was not developed from scratch as a "programming language" per-se, but rather evolved from a small webpage project ("Personal Home Page") into a programming language. The result is something that is very practical, but which is full of many design decisions that make no sense at all. Basically, it is the way that it is (in many cases) because of some historical development, rather than outright design. Neverth

Why is there no automated type detection in the Rutime Converter?

While adding automated type detection was on of the early goals of the Runtime Converter, it has since become completely removed from the project's roadmap. One of the reasons that it was removed is that a much more important feature is the ability of the converted software to work exactly as it was intended to in the source language. To do this, it was important to make dynamic binding to function and method calls, so that the number of arguments could vary, as it does in PH

How can PHP be converted to Java?

In general, there is not much about PHP that can't be converted to Java, though it is not particularly easy to do. What needs to be done is to convert the code and include a support library to match the features that aren't available in the target language. Each modern language has its own set of built in functions. In PHP, these consist of the standard library functions, as well as a number of popular extensions. In Java, that consists of various built in packages. For a con

PHP to Swift Progress

We have successfully developed the larger part of the helper library for Swift, including function calls (with return value, arguments, and output), exceptions, array helper class (native) and native array functions. The reason we did this now was to try out a "Java to Swift" converter (https://github.com/eyob--/j2swift). The converter was a great help, but the process was painstaking to get that last 1% of syntax differences correct. One very interesting difference between t

What platforms will the upcoming PHP to Java Converter support?

The PHP to Java conversion process creates code linked to a separate library (provided as a .jar) that provides various helper functions and classes used to make the conversion process work. It has a JNI connection to a library that connects to the real PHP codebase and forwards basic PHP standard library + extension function calls. This also means that the library will only work on those platforms for which a JNI library file is provided. For the first release, we will be pr

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