I want to automate a fairly simple task. For this I have written a small PHP script which I run from the command line using PHP-CLI. Now I want to hand over this script to someone but I do not want to:
Is there a way to create a .exe version of the PHP script. I am really not much worried about de-compilation; I am more worried about asking people to install and configure PHP.
I put together the following list a ways back - don't know if they are all current, or how many are now free, but you should find something useful here:
About:
Software:
Another thread on SO that adds a few more (check it out):
Can I encrypt PHP source or compile it so others can't see it? and how?
There's a bunch of PHP obfuscators. Probably several of them can do something like this.
Our Thicket PHP Obfuscator will obfuscate literal strings exactly this way, and will preserve system function identifiers such as "session_start" in this fashion, so it could be ours.
Maybe the Resource Kit Tools (specifically srvany.exe) can help you here. MSDN: How To Create A User-Defined Service and possibly this hint for 2008 Server should help you setup any executable as a service. (I've successfully used this on Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server and on Windows XP Professional [other Resource Kit, though])
You'd create a bat containing php your-script.php, wrap that with srvany.exe and voila, the script is started once the machine loads the services.
srvany.exe should handle those start/stop/restart calls you'd expect a daemon to execute. It would load your executable on start, kill the process on stop, do both on restart. So you don't have to worry about this part. You might want to check if a register_shutdown_function() can help identify when your service process is killed.
You can even define dependencies to other services (say some database or some such).
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTHENAMEOFYOURSERVICE]
"DependOnService"="DEPENDONTHIS"
replace THENAMEOFYOURSERVICE with the name you gave your service and DEPENDONTHIS with the name of the service to depend on (say "Postgres9.0" or something). Save that file to dependency.reg and load it with regedit /s dependency.reg. (Or doubleclick it in explorer…)
The general problem which you formulate is difficult to solve. Mostly a printer driver consists from some well known components like Print Monitor, Print Processor etc. which are well documented in Windows Driver Kit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff560885%28v=VS.85%29.aspx. Some years ago I wrote a Print Monitor. It worked many years at a customer. So I know exactly what I writing about. A Print Monitor is nothing more as a DLL with well documented functions. The same is about most other printer components. Those DLLs will be loaded and called from Spooler. If you have a modern printer driver it has no components which run in kernel mode. So one can load most of DLLs from which consist every printer driver and call corresponding function.
You are interesting for using one concert printer driver. So the first what one should do is to examine how this driver is implemented. If you find out which component do the job which you need, you will be probably able to load this DLL in your process and produce output which you need. It is possible that you post an URL where I could download this driver?
UPDATED: I though a little more about your requirements. It seems to me you can goes with the way suggested by developer of the printer driver. If the driver can print to a local port FILE, then it can print in any printer port. So you can give src of a Port Monitor Server driver from C:WinDDK7600.16385.1srcprintmonitorslocalmon (see also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff556478%28v=VS.85%29.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff549405%28v=VS.85%29.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff563806%28v=VS.85%29.aspx). (I is a windows 32/64 DLL, not a real driver) and makes small modification. Instead of saving results to a file you can dispatch the results to your application. It will be work with 100% without any tricks. If you will have some problem to understand localmon I can give you some tips. It is really not complex. The main changes which you have to do is to modify LcmStartDocPort LcmWritePort LcmReadPort LcmEndDocPort functions from localmon.c. Some easy thing which is distinguish Port DLL from a typical DLL, that instead of exporting all DLL's functions it export only one InitializePrintMonitor2 with pointers to all other functions.
UPDATED 2: One more tip for usage of "Local Port" monitor. If goes in printer configuration, then choose "Add Port...", select "Local Port" and click "New Port..." you can type any file name like "C:tempmy.bin". Then all what you print through a printer will be printed in this file without any user iteration. The name can be any win32 file name (UNC names or Named pipes are also allowed). With this way you can realize some scenarios without any programming with DDK.
UPDATED 3: I looked at the printer driver from different sides and looked one more time in the API in DDK. Now I want recommend you to choose the easiest way, and the way which will be full supported from the driver manufacturer. I suggest following:
You install a printer with the driver which you need and choose as the output port a Local Port with a fixed file name (see Update 2). I named here the destination filename as C:TEMPOutput.afp. So you receive exactly the same situation like recommend you driver manufacturer. Fixed file name is absolutely the same as FILE: port. So if you print to the printer you receive in Output.afp file in the C:TEMP directory. To be sure the end of writing you can use ReadDirectoryChangesW or FindNextChangeNotification / FindFirstChangeNotification functions with dwNotifyFilter equal to FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_WRITE. Then you receive notification after last write-time of the file. It means after the end of writing and after FileClose and after the cache is sufficiently flushed. So the file Output.afp is not locked and you can really safe read the results.
For printing of simple documents you can use WritePrinter function (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162959%28VS.85%29.aspx and remark in the documentation http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd145226%28VS.85%29.aspx). Writing of complex files with bitmaps, color and different fonts you have to use typical GDI API like one this in Windows (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162865%28v=VS.85%29.aspx).
This solution looks not very spectacular like writing a printer driver component or a simulation of spooler environment for printer driver, but it will work, will safe work and will be full supported from the driver manufacturer.
Peachpie
http://www.peachpie.io
https://github.com/iolevel/peachpie
Peachpie is PHP 7 compiler based on Roslyn by Microsoft and drawing from popular Phalanger. It allows PHP to be executed within the .NET/.NETCore by compiling the PHP code to pure MSIL.
Phalanger
http://v4.php-compiler.net/
http://wiki.php-compiler.net/Phalanger_Wiki
https://github.com/devsense/phalanger
Phalanger is a project which was started at Charles University in Prague and was supported by Microsoft. It compiles source code written in the PHP scripting language into CIL (Common Intermediate Language) byte-code. It handles the beginning of a compiling process which is completed by the JIT compiler component of the .NET Framework. It does not address native code generation nor optimization. Its purpose is to compile PHP scripts into .NET assemblies, logical units containing CIL code and meta-data.
Bambalam
https://github.com/xZero707/Bamcompile/
Bambalam PHP EXE Compiler/Embedder is a free command line tool to convert PHP applications to standalone Windows .exe applications. The exe files produced are totally standalone, no need for php dlls etc. The php code is encoded using the Turck MMCache Encode library so it's a perfect solution if you want to distribute your application while protecting your source code. The converter is also suitable for producing .exe files for windowed PHP applications (created using for example the WinBinder library). It's also good for making stand-alone PHP Socket servers/clients (using the php_sockets.dll extension). It's NOT really a compiler in the sense that it doesn't produce native machine code from PHP sources, but it works!
ZZEE PHPExe
http://www.zzee.com/phpexe/
ZZEE PHPExe compiles PHP, HTML, Javascript, Flash and other web files into Windows GUI exes. You can rapidly develop Windows GUI applications by employing the familiar PHP web paradigm. You can use the same code for online and Windows applications with little or no modification. It is a Commercial product.
phc-win
http://wiki.swiftlytilting.com/Phc-win
The PHP extension bcompiler is used to compile PHP script code into PHP bytecode. This bytecode can be included just like any php file as long as the bcompiler extension is loaded. Once all the bytecode files have been created, a modified Embeder is used to pack all of the project files into the program exe.
Requires
ExeOutput
http://www.exeoutput.com/
Commercial
WinBinder
http://winbinder.org/
WinBinder is an open source extension to PHP, the script programming language. It allows PHP programmers to easily build native Windows applications, producing quick and rewarding results with minimum effort. Even short scripts with a few dozen lines can generate a useful program, thanks to the power and flexibility of PHP.
PHPDesktop
https://github.com/cztomczak/phpdesktop
PHP Desktop is an open source project founded by Czarek Tomczak in 2012 to provide a way for developing native desktop applications using web technologies such as PHP, HTML5, JavaScript & SQLite. This project is more than just a PHP to EXE compiler, it embeds a web-browser (Internet Explorer or Chrome embedded), a Mongoose web-server and a PHP interpreter. The development workflow you are used to remains the same, the step of turning an existing website into a desktop application is basically a matter of copying it to "www/" directory. Using SQLite database is optional, you could embed mysql/postgresql database in application's installer.
PHP Nightrain
https://github.com/kjellberg/nightrain
Using PHP Nightrain you will be able to deploy and run HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP web applications as a native desktop application on Windows, Mac and the Linux operating systems. Popular PHP Frameworks (e.g. CakePHP, Laravel, Drupal, etc…) are well supported!
phc-win "fork"
https://github.com/RDashINC/phc-win
A more-or-less forked version of phc-win, it uses the same techniques as phc-win but supports almost all modern PHP versions. (5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, etc) It also can use Enigma VB to combine the php5ts.dll with your exe, aswell as UPX compress it. Lastly, it has win32std and winbinder compilied statically into PHP.
EDIT
Another option is to use
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-cross-platform-application-development/
an online compiler that can build executables for a number of different platforms, from a number of different languages including PHP
TideSDK
http://www.tidesdk.org/
TideSDK is actually the renamed Titanium Desktop project. Titanium remained focused on mobile, and abandoned the desktop version, which was taken over by some people who have open sourced it and dubbed it TideSDK.
Generally, TideSDK uses HTML, CSS and JS to render applications, but it supports scripted languages like PHP, as a plug-in module, as well as other scripting languages like Python and Ruby.