COM Servers

[oceanebelle]

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.

[penagate]

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

[oceanebelle]

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

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?

[penagate]

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.

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?

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?

[oceanebelle]

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?

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.

[penagate]

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.

[oceanebelle]

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.

[penagate]

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