PHP-GTK

Zend Studio is a convenient environment to code in PHP, even though it is not currently possible to use it for integrated debugging of PHP-GTK code: its php completion and file management, and phpdoc integration make it very useful for the PHP-GTK environment too. However some settings are necessary to ease its use, due to the specific extensions typically used by PHP-GTK programs: phpw files for applications, and glade / gladep for Glade files storing UIs.

The function of the GtkCTree, GtkCList and other associated components has been overhauled in GTK2, meaning PHP-GTK now has a very thoughtfully detailed mechanism for building trees and lists, more or less following an MVC model.

The official site for PHP-GTK is obviously a natural must for anything related to PHP-GTK 2.

However, its resource pages links indiscriminately to fresh and useful material, and to obsolete intro-level information for the now-defunct PHP-GTK 1.

Here is my selection of current useful resources for PHP-GTK 2, for the developer who already read the advertorials, installed the environment and ran the intro tutorials, and now wants to actually create with the extension.

As many other developers of e-commerce sites using Drupal, I've had to solve the problem of integrating the "front-office" store maintained in the ecommerce module with the back-office data like the actual invoicing matching legal requirements, tax documents, product ordering from suppliers, and so on, and I've had to choose a toolkit for this.

Until recently I had been using Delphi with XML-RPC to upload content and remotely monitor my sites, but I was looking for a cross-platform solution, and one that would preferably have sources available. Using Kylix for other projects and it *does* work, even with SOAP and remote data stores, but the level of support and lack of upgrades from Borland regarding it left me rather skeptical about using it for new projects. And this was not even taking into account the fact the XML-RPC for Delphi and Kylix is a poorly supported Open Source project. So what ?

This is a small code example I've done for Riff News to demonstrate how to load data into a PHP-GTK GtkCTree from an external XML file:

http://www.riff.org/charger_un_gtkctree_depuis_xml_en_php-gtk

The (short) intro text is in french, but you can very well skip it to go directly to the code.

The example may also be useful in that the data being loaded into the tree represent the PHP-GTK 1 GTK class hierarchy (GDK not included).