COM Servers

How do I know a DLL is a COM Server?

I need to know this so that I can safely say at least that the DLL will be callable by PHP.

You can check if a DLL is a COM library by looking for its DLLRegisterServer function entry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by penagate

You can check if a DLL is a COM library by looking for its DLLRegisterServer function entry.

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Hi PG, thanks for the prompt reply... but how do I do that, given only the dll file? :(


Oh i tried registering with the regsvr32 application.. but it says DLLRegisterServer entry point not found...

does this mean i cannot use this with PHP? :(

You would need to look at its export table.

What langauge are you doing this from?

And here is a explanation (hopefully)


Edit: did not see your edit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oceane

Oh i tried registering with the regsvr32 application.. but it says DLLRegisterServer entry point not found...

does this mean i cannot use this with PHP?

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I don't know, I have been trying to forget about COM as much as I can and wasn't aware you could use it with PHP.

What do you need to do, load a COM object and access it through PHP? Or call a function in a standard (non-COM) DLL?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by penagate

I don't know, I have been trying to forget about COM as much as I can and wasn't aware you could use it with PHP.

What do you need to do, load a COM object and access it through PHP? Or call a function in a standard (non-COM) DLL?

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well, this is not actually my project, but im trying to help with research. :(

And basically there is this GPS Point Plotter software that the client wants the project developers to use. There is an IDE as well as a DLL, but they must embed this to the PHP project. Boss says, that there is a way to call DLL from PHP. But then according to PHP documentation, only DLLs that are a COM Servers are callable from within PHP.

Okeydoke well you can do it (you can do everything in PHP trust me :))

Have a look here:
PHP: W32api functions

It would appear, after loading the extension (downloading it first, if using PHP >= 5.10) you can use the w32api_register_function to import a function from a DLL. It doesn't have to be the Win API, it can be any standard non-COM dll. Then, you call the function in the normal scope of your script.

does this mean that the server must be a ms technology?



edit: just read in the documentation that this can only work with windows systems... server is linux i believe. :(

I thought DLLs (as such) only existed on Windows?