[TAG] Jim, HELP needed, 5-minute solution needed by computerindustry

[Ben Okopnik]

Hi, Bill -

[Please remember to CC the list the next time. We'd all really apreciate
it if you didn't top post, either.]

----- Forwarded message from Aviongoo Sales <sales at aviongoo.com> -----

> Ben,
> 
> I love PHP.  Unfortunately not all people do.

I teach the stuff - just came back from a week of teaching an advanced
course at a major insurance company - and I don't love it at all. PHP
is, in my opinion, unforgivably buggy, has *way* too many functions and
way too little flexibility, makes it too easy to write bad code, and has
too few testing/validation tools. It's relatively easy to learn/use
initially, but it quickly runs out of power; it uses a horribly-broken
imitation of OO which is missing much of the point of OO methodology,
and it is responsible for more than a third of *all* vulnerabilities in
the National Vulnerability Database last year (it was almost _half_ of
all vulns back in 2006.) The only way to make it even marginally better
requires using a closed-source app with a truly weird licensing scheme
(Zend), and even that solution is less than wonderful.

In essence, PHP reminds me of those brightly-colored ices that are sold
by ice cream trucks: they're pretty and sweet and pleasant on a hot day,
but in just a few minutes, they melt and run all over your clothes,
staining them forever with potentially toxic chemicals.

But that could just be the result of intense contact with it over the
past week. A month down the road, I'll probably have a somewhat milder
opinion of it. :)

> I was forced into writing  
> part of a solution using VB.NET on a PC to connect to my PHP software on a  
> Linux server.
> 
> And, I've already cobbled together a solution to meet my personal needs.
> 
> However, the bigger issue remains the same.  Before I developed my own  
> solution (I used command-line ftp code - MSDOS lives!!!!), I searched for a 
> "PHP-VB.NET solution".  I can understand the Microsoft community not 
> wanting to provide a solution, however, I can not understand why the PHP 
> community would not document a solution!  Throughout my searches I have 
> never discovered a "drop in the code and go" solution.
> 
> I even have an Apache server and PHP installed on my PC - but that solution 
> does not work all the time.  For example, currently my ISP seems to have  
> configured something so that Dynamic DNS does not work.

Why not configure your PC to connect to your server via, say, SSH and
download the files that you want? At that point, it doesn't matter
whether DynDNS works or not; as long as you have network connectivity,
you'll have your files.

> So, in my mind it is a PHP community task to be able to talk to any client 
> - after all, PHP is primarily for servers.  I especially think the PHP  
> community is missing the boat by not providing a simple seamless solution 
> to connect a Windows client to a Linux server.

Why do you consider that to be something that PHP should do? This is
like saying that PHP should include a web browser: from some odd
perspective, that may sound reasonable (after all, PHP is designed to
work with the Web, it's a programming language, and so on), but in
reality, it makes no sense at all.

> That's why I mentioned a  
> "5-minute" solution.

What I've suggested above won't take much more than that - assuming that
you already have the tools installed on your machine.

> Because these days when you want to get a project  
> done, there is no time to search for hours for a solution.  You either find 
> it from a search or build it yourself.  But, when you build it yourself, it 
> is generally a custom solution.
> 
> Are you telling me that a simple solution to programmatically upload a  
> single file from a VB.NET application to a PHP server is not somthing that  
> would be useful to the PHP community?  I beg to differ!

If VB.NET supports something like a 'system' call, then you're already
done. The PuttySSH site, for example
(http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) provides you with 
a Wind0ws version of 'scp'; that's really all you need.


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *