![](\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/images\/delphiphpsm.gif\")
<\/p>\nI tried out Delphi for PHP for the first time this weekend.<\/p>\n
Install on Vista was smooth. The setup installs its own copy of Apache 2 and PHP 5. A few minutes later and I was up and running.<\/p>\n
The IDE is Delphi-like. Here is a scrunched-up image to give you a flavour:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have a standard application I build when trying out a new development tool. It is a to-do list with a listbox, a textbox, and buttons to add and remove items from the list. I started well, and soon had the controls placed, though they are tricky to line-up nicely. I resorted to setting the Left property as the snap-to-grid did not work for me.<\/p>\n
Then I double-clicked the Add button. As expected, I was greeted with an empty Click handler. What to type? After a little experimentation I came up with this:<\/p>\n
\n$this->lstItems->AddItem($this->ebItem->Text,null,null); <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When you type ->, the editor pops up autocomplete choices. Nice. I clicked the run button and the application opened in my web browser. I set a breakpoint on the line; that worked nicely, especially after I displayed the Locals window so I could see the value of variables.<\/p>\n
The next step is to implement removing an item. This is fractionally more challenging (I realise this is little more than Hello World), since I need to retrieve the index of the selected item and then work out how to remove it.<\/p>\n
I am embarrassed to admit that it took me some time. Yes, I tried the documentation, but it is terrible. Unbelievably bad. Someone ran a thing called Doc-O-Matic<\/a> over the code. Here’s the entire description of the ListBox control:<\/p>\n
\nA class to encapsulate a listbox control <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
There’s also a reference which lists methods, again with a one-line description if you are lucky. Here’s the one for ListBox.getItems:<\/p>\n
\nThis is getItems, a member of class ListBox.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I gave up on the docs. I had figured out AddItem; I had discovered that the itemindex property has the index of the selected item; but there is no RemoveItem or DeleteItem. I went back to basics. The ListBox has an _items member field which is an array. In PHP you remove an item from an array with unset. I resorted to editing the VCL for PHP by adding a RemoveAt method to CustomListBox:<\/p>\n
\nfunction RemoveAt($index)
{
unset($this->_items[$index]);
}<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nNote that I am not proposing you do the same. There must be a better way to do this. I just couldn’t work it out quickly from the docs; and I was determined to get this up and running. <\/p>\n
Here’s my code for removing an item: <\/p>\n
\n$selindex = $this->lstItems->itemindex; <\/p>\n
if ( $selindex > -1)
{
$this->lstItems->RemoveAt($selindex);
}<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nNow my app worked fine. What about deployment? I used the deployment wizard, which essentially copies a bunch of files into a directory, ready for upload. There are a lot. 44 files to be precise, mostly of course the VCL for PHP. Still, it was painless, and you can configure a web server to share these files between different applications. <\/p>\n
All I needed to test it was a web server running PHP 5.x (it will not work with PHP 4). Fortunately I had one available, so I uploaded my first Delphi for PHP application. It looked good, but although it worked on my local machine, the deployed app throws an error when you click a button:<\/p>\n
\nApplication raised an exception class Exception<\/b> with message ‘The Input Filter PHP extension is not setup on this PHP installation, so the contents returned by Input is *not* filtered’<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I note that this user<\/a> has the same problem. My hunch is that Delphi for PHP requires PHP 5.2 – I only have 5.1 at the moment.*<\/p>\n
In addition, I don’t like the way the default deployment handles errors, by publishing my callstack to the world, complete with the location of the files on my web server. <\/p>\n
How secure are all these VCL for PHP files anyway? What assurance do I have about this? Will they be patched promptly if security issues are discovered?<\/p>\n
Important questions.<\/p>\n
There will be plenty more to say about Delphi for PHP. For the moment I’m reserving judgment. I will say that the release looks rushed, which is a shame.<\/p>\n
Update<\/strong>: I’ve now seen a fix posted to the Borland newsgroups for the input filter exception, showing how to remove the code which raises it. However I suggest you do not apply this fix, for security reasons, unless you are deploying on a trusted intranet. It is vital to sanitize PHP input on the internet.<\/p>\n
*PHP 5.2 is not the answer. It could even be a problem. Delphi for PHP ships with PHP 5.1. There is an input filter extension which you can add for PHP 5.x; see http:\/\/pecl.php.net\/package\/filter<\/a>. However these are built into PHP 5.2; but the version used by VCL for PHP is old and seems to be incompatible. What a mess.<\/p>\n
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