WinBinder - The native Windows binding for PHP

WinBinder is a PHP extension written in C, that allows you to build native client-side applications for the Windows Platform in pure PHP.

You will need PHP 5.3/5.4 plus the WinBinder matching your PHP version.

• use one of the *.dlls in the binaries subfolder
• compile it yourself

• get a version of Visual Studio (this how to refers to Visual Studio 2008 Professional)
• get the PHP binaries you want to use with WinBinder, e.g. VC9 x86 Thread Safe 5.4
• get the PHP source matching the binary version from above, e.g. VC9 x86 Thread Safe 5.4
• get the WinBinder source code

1. create the project: either create a new Visual C++ project, or import from existing source - make your new project a "Win32 Project", call it php_winbinder, or pick any name you like - select "DLL" as application type

• change default C++ options:

  • right click your project and select "Properties"

  • under "Configuration Properties" select "General"

    • set "Character Set" to "Use Multi-Byte Character Set"

  • under "Configuration Properties" select "C/C++", and there select "General"

    • set "Debug Information Format" to "Program Database (/Zi)""
    • set "Detect 64-bit Portability Issues" to "No"

  • under "Configuration Properties" select "C/C++", and there select "Code Generation"

    • set "Enable String Pooling" to "Yes (/GF)"
    • set "Enable Minimal Rebuild" to "No"
    • set "Basic Runtime Checks" to "Default"
    • set "Runtime Library" to "Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd)"

• set the include path:

  • again, under "Configuration Properties" select "C/C++", and there select "General"
    • set the include path as following (adapting to your case)
      • C:\path\to\php\source\main
      • C:\path\to\php\source\Zend
      • C:\path\to\php\source\TSRM
      • C:\path\to\php\source\regex
      • C:\path\to\php\source
      • C:\path\to\php\source\ext\standard

• set the Preprocessor Definitions:

  • again, under "Configuration Properties" select "C/C++", and there select "Preprocessor"
    • add the following definitions
      • ZEND_DEBUG=0
      • ZTS=1
      • ZEND_WIN32
      • PHP_WIN32

• set the Linker Options:

  • under "Configuration Properties" select "Linker", and there select "General"

    • set "Additional Library Directories" to C:\path\to\php\binary\dev

  • under "Configuration Properties" select "Linker", and there select "Input"

    • add "php5.lib" (for non-thred-safe version) or "php5ts.lib" (for thread-safe version) to "Additional Dependecies"

• edit stdafx.h:

  • replace the contents of stdafx.h with the following, if it does not match already:
    #pragma once
    /* PHP Extension headers /
    / include zend win32 config first /
    #include "zend_config.w32.h"
    / include standard header */
    #include "php.h"

You may now try to compile the extension. When successful, it is located in the folder "Debug" of your Visual Studio project.

• However, it's more likely, that you run into some errors like:

  • fatal error C1083: "../main/config.w32.h": No such file or directory

    • open a Visual Studio command prompt and change into you PHP source directory
    • run the command "buildconf.bat"
    • run the command "cscript /nologo configure.js"

  • great, now I get "ERROR: bison is required"

    • either get bison, or open "configure.js" and comment out the following line ... ERROR('bison is required') ... and re-run "cscript /nologo configure.js"

  • fatal error C1853: something about pre-compiled headers

    • again, under "Configuration Properties" select "C/C++", and there select "Precompiled Headers"
      • set "Use Precompiled Headers" to "Do not use precompiled headers"

  • error C2466: cannot allocate an array of constant size 0

    • go to "C:\path\to\php\source\main" and open "config.w32.h"
    • comment out the following lines
      #ifndef _WIN64
      #define _USE_32BIT_TIME_T 1
      #endif
      #define HAVE_STDLIB_H 1

  • error LNK2005: **** already defined in %%%%%

    • delete files automatically generated by Visual Studio from the project, i.e. stdafx.cpp and dllmain.cpp (maybe more?)

  • fatal error LNK1000: Internal error during IncrBuildImage

    • update your Visual Studio, LNK1000 may happen due to a bug
    • under "Configuration Properties" select "Linker", and there select "General"
      • set "activate incrementel linking" to "No"

Be sure to check out the docs folder. There are also examples in the phpcode folder. Futhermore, you can go to www.winbinder.org, there is also a forum.