[plug] Reading a horrible C file in PHP.

[Lance Duivenbode]

Alternatively you could just write a custom PHP extension. I have done this in 
the past and while it's not simple, I wouldn't say it's overly difficult if 
you've got some C experience. The only problem would be trying to convince 
the hosting company to let you use it.

In terms of simplicity, I'm with Kirk on this one. Converting to some other 
format (CSV,XML, etc) is probably the most time efficient and effective way 
to do things.

Lance

On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 06:05 pm, Shayne O'Neill wrote:
> I have infact been eyeing off writing a swig wrapper for the function
> (I've done a fair bit with python and swig), but honestly its goofy as
> hell, and I wonder whether it'd be kosher with the hosting company.
>
> Hmm. Must think thru.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au] On
> Behalf Of Kirk Turner
> Sent: Monday, 7 August 2006 4:49 PM
> To: plug at plug.org.au
> Subject: Re: [plug] Reading a horrible C file in PHP.
>
> On 8/7/06, Shayne O'Neill <shayneo at bestflights.com.au> wrote:
> > Ok. I've been tasked to convert this horrible C cgi to php.
> >
> >
> > The stupid thing reads in a data file like this;-
>
> ...
>
> > Nasty huh?
>
> Its not exactly a nasty way - as more an efficient way - unless as you
> have to read it in another language that doesn't support structs. Its
> essentially just writing out memory for the struct directly in a form of
> binary serialisation (you'll see this in many a C data function).
>
> However that said it should be fairly straight forward in the way it is
> handled looking at it (and a hexdump -C should reveal some of this too).
> It should look something like this:
>
> flightid - an int coming from 32 bytes (byte order and size will depend
> on the platform) name - the next 256 bytes, you'll need to search for
> the 0x00 byte (NULL, or \0 character) and termiate the string there -
> how to convert it into a php string you'll have to work out, php is not
> my strong point.
> price - next 128 bytes
> description - next 65535 bytes
> 50x depature struct following the same process
>
> and then repeat ad nauseum for each part.
>
> You might find it easier to convert the data in C itself into a format
> that is a bit more compatible with PHP (XML for example) or if you need
> to have compatability between C and PHP write an extension in php to
> load it (there might already be one that converts structs to php classes
> for example?)
>
> Kirk
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