Desktop Application Development with PHP-GTK

By Akash Mehta
2008-03-13


What is PHP-GTK?

PHP-GTK 2 is out, and with it, a fantastic means for PHP developers to build useful, reliable cross-platform desktop applications. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to get up and running with PHP-GTK in no time and build your first desktop application.

Before you continue, have a brief read through my previous article on building desktop applications in PHP, for a bit of background to this tutorial. PHP-GTK is a PHP extension that provides bindings for the GTK window system. GTK, or Gimp ToolKit, provides a collection of visual elements called "controls" which you can use in your PHP application - essentially, these provide the visuals. The PHP bindings from PHP-GTK allow us as developers to manipulate these controls programatically, and from within PHP.

This is all very well, but what does it mean for you? In short, you can take all your existing PHP skills, and reuse your existing PHP code, but build complete desktop applications. In my previous article, I elaborate on the benefits of desktop applications and why you might want to build them; but consider being able to achieve everything Flash objects and Java applets can without having to learn a new language.

Tutorial Pages:
» What is PHP-GTK?
» Getting started with PHP-GTK
» Your first PHP-GTK application
» So how powerful is this PHP-GTK?
» Building a real application in PHP-GTK
» Further reading

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