NAME
    PHP - embedded PHP interpreter

DESCRIPTION
    The module makes it possible to execute PHP code, call PHP functions and
    methods, manipulate PHP arrays, and create PHP objects.

SYNOPSIS
            use PHP;

    General use

            # evaluate arbitrary PHP code; exception is thrown
            # and can be caught via standard eval{}/$@ block 
            PHP::eval(<<EVAL);
            function print_val(\$arr,\$val) {
                    echo \$arr[\$val];
            }
        
            class TestClass {
                    function TestClass ( $param ) {}
                    function method(\$val) { return \$val + 1; }
            };
            EVAL

            # catch output of PHP code
            PHP::options( stdout => sub {
                    print "PHP says: $_[0]\n";
            });
            PHP::eval('echo 42;');

    Arrays

            # create a php array
            my $array = PHP::array();
            # tie it either to an array or a hash
            my ( @array, %hash);
            $array-> tie(\%hash);
            $array-> tie(\@array);

            # access array content
            $array[1] = 42;
            $hash{2} = 43;

            # pass arrays to function
            # Note - function name is not known by perl in advance, and
            # is called via AUTOLOAD
            PHP::print_val($a, 1);
            PHP::print_val($a, 2);

    Objects and properties

            my $TestClass = PHP::Object-> new('TestClass');
            print $TestClass-> method(42), "\n";
        
            $TestClass-> tie(\%hash);
            # set a property
            $hash{new_prop} = 'string';

API
    call FUNCTION ...
        Calls PHP function with list of parameters. Returns exactly one
        value.

    include, include_once, require, require_once
        Shortcuts to the identical PHP constructs.

    array
        Returns a handle to a newly created PHP array of type "PHP::Array".
        The handle can be later tied with perl hashes or arrays via "tie"
        call.

    PHP::Object->new($class_name, @parameters)
        Instantiates a PHP object of PHP class $class_name and returns a
        handle to it. The methods of the class can be called directly via
        the handle:

                my $obj = PHP::Object-> new( 'MyClass', @params_to_constructor);
                $object-> method( @some_params);

    PHP::Entity->tie($array_handle, $tie_to)
        Ties existing handle to a PHP entity to either a perl hash or a perl
        array. The tied hash or array can be used to access PHP pseudo_hash
        values indexed either by string or integer value.

        The PHP entity can be either an array, represented by "PHP::Array",
        or an object, represented by "PHP::Object". In the latter case, the
        object properties are represented as hash/array values.

    PHP::Entity->link($original, $link)
        Records a reference to an arbitrary perl scalar $link as an alias to
        $original "PHP::Entity" object. This is used internally by
        "PHP::TieHash" and "PHP::TieArray", but might be also used for other
        purposes.

    PHP::Entity::unlink($link)
        Removes association between a "PHP::Entity" object and $link.

    PHP::options
        Contains set of internal options. If called without parameters,
        returns the names of the options. If called with a single parameter,
        return the associated value. If called with two parameters, replaces
        the associated value.

        debug $integer
            If set, loads of debugging information are dumped to stderr

            Default: 0

        stdout/stderr $callback
            "stdout" and "stderr" options define callbacks that are called
            when PHP decides to print something or complain, respectively.

            Default: undef

DEBUGGING
    Environment variable "P5PHPDEBUG", if set to 1, turns the debug mode on.
    The same effect can be achieved programmatically by calling

            PHP::options( debug => 1);

INSTALLATION
    The module uses php-embed SAPI extension to inter-operate with PHP
    interpreter. That means php must be configured with '--enable-embed'
    parameters prior to using the module.

    The "sub dl_load_flags { 0x01 }" code in PHP.pm is required for PHP to
    load correctly its extensions. If your platform does RTLD_GLOBAL by
    default and croaks upon this line, it is safe to remove the line.

WHY?
    While I do agree that in general it is absolutely pointless to use PHP
    functionality from within Perl, scenarios where one must connect an
    existing PHP codebase to something else, are not something unusual.
    Also, this module might be handy for people who know PHP but afraid to
    switch to Perl, or want to reuse their old PHP code.

    Currently, not all PHP functionality is implemented, but OTOH I don't
    really expect this module to grow that big, because I believe it is
    easier to call "PHP::eval" rather than implement all the subtleties of
    Zend API. There are no callbacks to Perl from PHP code, and I don't
    think these are needed, because one thing is to be lazy and not to
    rewrite PHP code, and another is to make new code in PHP that uses Perl
    when PHP is not enough. As I see it, the latter would kill all incentive
    to switch to Perl, so I'd rather leave callbacks unimplemented.

SEE ALSO
    Using Perl code from PHP:
    <http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-perl.php>

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 2005 catpipe Systems ApS. All rights reserved.

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR
    Dmitry Karasik <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>