Forum OpenACS Q&A: PHP integration

1: PHP integration

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 06/06/02 06:49 AM

I have a project were a lot of stuff has been written for PHP and
mysql.

The system owner wants to keep that piece of code 😟(. Any ideas on
what is the best approach?

The PHP part doesn't have much on user management so there wouldn't be
any share data.

2: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 06/06/02 05:02 PM

Have a proxy server in front like Apache or Squid. Then forward to the correct web server where the request is needed. Something like what this guy has done Aolserver + Java

3: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Matthew Terenzio on 06/06/02 05:22 PM

I have more of a question than answer.

Does PHP on Aolserver have poor performance compared to Apache (assuming its apache)? Does anyone have experience with aolserver and PHP?

Does she/he want to keep the PHP code or both the code and the database(and the server)?

4: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 06/06/02 10:32 PM

I compiled the current version of PHP for AOLServer so I could run IMP. In the past, PHP crashed almost instantly with anything, not just IMP. But this time it works well enough for our small business purposes.

Did run into some problems though with the database abstraction layer when I tried to install Squirrelmail. Wasn't able to get this up and running. While I can connect to a PostgreSQL database using pg_connect, it continues to fail when Squirrelmail routes the call through the PHP database abstraction layer DB.

5: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 06/07/02 01:42 AM

The PHP system maintains the description of courses for my School. Is a "content management system" with the data model appropriate for that function.

I am trying to get the School to use OACS, so we can exploit all the collaboration tools, and why not the content management functionalities, but they don't want to through away what they have done.

Scalability is not a big issue since I doubt that thousands of people are looking at our course description everyday!

6: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Michel Henry de Generet on 06/07/02 08:25 AM

The Gatekeeper module is a proxy system with the user management of OACS4.5, good way to keep the best of both world without much change!

7: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 06/07/02 09:15 AM

Michel

I never used the Gatekeeper and the documentation doesn't tell me that much but it looks very promising. Have you used it? Has it been ported to postgres?
Thanks for the tip

8: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Michel Henry de Generet on 06/10/02 03:37 PM

Rafael

I did use Gatekeeper on ACS4.5 without problems. It is a very simple proxy system enhanced by the OACS4 security model. As I remember it was very easy to configure and very easy to use, you have to define an internal URL which is mounted in your hierachy and secured by the usual model. Gatekeeper do not use directly any database, it use the general OACS model of mounting instances of packages.

9: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 09/10/02 10:40 AM

Michel,

I have been searching the bboards and OpenACS 4 docs on information on the gatekeeper package, but can't find anything describing the purpose in plain English. It's seems quite a few folks are interested in finding out more.

10: GateKeeper (response to 1)

Posted by Randy Kunkee on 09/10/02 08:50 PM

Install it. Mount it as an application. Configure the instance parameters, which primarily is the URL of the site to proxy. It works well and I'm planning to use it in an ongoing project to ease the transition to OACS. I found some cases where one ends up getting sent directly to the proxied site, rather than remaining within the OACS proxy, but those issues are probably easily worked out (I'm counting on it).

11: Response to PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Torben Brosten on 09/10/02 11:20 PM

I've read the requirements at http://(mylocalOpenACS4.5)/doc/gatekeeper/requirements.html but still have a question:

Does Gate Keeper bypass the caching ability of AOLserver, or are the pages to the external "gated/proxied" url cached in case of heavy traffic to the gatekeeper url, proxied server down etc?

Ben, I can see how the description is awkward. What part of the Gate Keeper explanation is confusing? Maybe I can restate it --I think I understand what it does, but I have not used it, so we'll have to move forward with caution, hoping that some else corrects me if I'm wrong in the description.

12: Re: PHP integration (response to 1)

Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 01/21/04 04:16 PM

Has anyone succeeded using PHP with AOLServer 3.3oacs1?
I tried the gatekeeper but it is very slow for pages with many images. The images are served through the gatekeeper as well which is very time consuming.

Greetings,
Nima