cfphp - coldfusion cfml to php parser.

This is a first alpha attempt to code a cfml-to-php parser or "engine".

(Considering my limited PHP coding skills) The goal of this project is to make an 80% correct cfml->php parser, which should require limited php manual editing before a final php template is exported.

When a final php template is stored, every time a cfml (*.cfml, *.cfm, *.cfc) page is called, the final php template (with the same cfml file name) is executed as an include file on top the cfml code in the cfml file, while the cfml code is further ignored by a die() command.

So basically, if you browse to "whatever.cfm" on the server, "whatever_final.php" gets executed instead as an include, but "whatever.cfm" remains the page-address.

When the project is finished, with this setup, virtually you will have a mixed Coldfusion-PHP server, with added posibilites of custom CF and other HTML-style tags.

Unlike the "Smarty" engine, with cfphp you can eventually use functional tags straight inside your PHP page, if this project succeeds to that point. No need for seperate smarty tpl templates. If cfphp can translate a CFML file, it should also be able to translate a PHP file with CF-tags inside.

BTW, I would encourage everybody visiting here to also try and use "Smarty". It has been in development for many years. https://www.smarty.net/

The .htaccess file of this project adds [.cfm, .cfml, .cfc] as PHP template types. cfphp will only work if you can add or edit the .htaccess file in your website.

The big trick of this project is the added direct full path to ... [php_value auto_prepend_file "/www/cfphp/cfphpbin/cfphpEngine.php"] line in .htaccess. Please don't use a relative path for this, otherwise you will need that same cfphpEngine.php file in each subdirectory.

This will load the cfphpEngine.php (include) page before every other PHP, cfm, cfml and cfc template.

This cfphpEngine.php file contains the selection mechanisme of how to process a cfml file. PHP files are passed through without altering the php code, but you can optionally use prepend.php to prepend every php file with php code as well.

Parsing cftags and arguments don't seem to be a the greatest problem. However, separating function-names from variables, and especially nested #function(#variable#)# pound-signs is a big challenge, and will likely require hand-editing.

I would therefore advise everybody testing this code to start using php-dollar-$variables in CFML pages ... instead of CFML-style pound-#variables# to avoid parsing headaches.

The cfscripts (code blocks) are copied over from CFML to PHP without alterations. Please use (or hand-edit to) php-script inside your cfscript-tags.

Eventually, most of the cffunctions will be translated with cffunction-names, and you will be able to use cffunctions in your php code as well.

Coding/translating CF-Tags and cffunctions will be a great tasks, and will only happen if other coders will join this project.

The MyWind MySQL version of the Microsoft Access 2010 Northwind sample database will be used to test and debug MySQL queries. https://github.com/dalers/mywind

Why this project?

• It will make easier for CFML coders to switch to PHP.
• PHP hosting is cheaper and easier to obtain than CFML hosting. All current Coldfusion engines seem to require a Java layer/server. There are lot more php hosts to chose from than host companies offering Java/Tomcat and/or Adobe Coldfusion/Lucee. Did I mention that Adobe Coldfusion/Lucee hosting is often a lot more expensive!
• No need to ask administrators special requests to setup a CFML server or Java/Tomcat related settings, etc, etc, etc. A simple PHP server should do the trick.
• In my experience, c++ compiled PHP servers are (much) faster than Java-based uncompiled CFML servers. Java based scripts can easily get memory issues, requiring server reboots.
• CFML offers a bit more higher-level programming than PHP, with blocks of (debugged) functionality inside HTML-like CF-tags or functions. I have noticed that I debug a lot more in PHP than what I did with CFML, taking up a lot of time! The main reason why also Smarty was developed.
• There is less CFML code than with PHP == less debugging. Just the combination cfquery-cfoutput (or with cfloop) alone saves a lot of time. The sucess of this project will, in particular, depend on whether we can make the cfquery tag work with all its many options.
• Smarty is a great project, I have been playing with it for some months, but in the end, I realy mis my cfml. Hopefully, php coders will start to appreciate cftags coding as well, and use this project to create their own tags to extend PHP directly inside PHP code (later on when this project develops).

I have 22 years experience with CFML, and about 6 months with PHP. If you want to improve my PHP coding, please join and make sure you teach me :)

This project is making use of the Ace online code-editor to debug CFML->PHP code before saving the final PHP file. There is no need for an external CFML/PHP editor. You still need FTP to upload CFML files to your server, but each CFML file run in Admin mode gets a CFML & PHP online Ace-editor window to make changes and to debug. So, direct editing on the server.

For a quick testing setup on Windows ...

1. Install https://www.uwamp.com/en/ (my location is c:\uwamp)
2. Copy this project to C:\UwAmp\www\ so that you will have the C:\UwAmp\www\cfphp folder.
3. Check C:\UwAmp\www\cfphp.htaccess for the correct direct path of "/cfphp/cfphpbin/cfphpEngine.php"
4. Copy the Ace "src" folder to your cfphp folder as a subdirectory, and rename "src" to "AceEditor" (e.g. C:\UwAmp\www\cfphp\AceEditor): https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace-builds/tree/2ea299a2bee97fdf58fc90cb76eec6c45535a63f I don't want to share Ace in my github. https://ace.c9.io/
5. Create a new directory "tempdb" like C:\UwAmp\tempdb\ ... cfQueryofQuery operations are conducted with SQlite, for which per visitor a db-file is created in a tempdb folder, off-web, one level higher than the serverRoot ( C:/UwAmp/www/../tempdb/ in this example ).
6. Start the webserver
7. Load http://localhost/cfphp/CFMLtestPages/cfqueryTests.cfm ... for one example.

Please remember ... this is just the proof of concept phase. Don't expect a fully functional cfPHP engine.

For the moment I want to show that it's possible to parse CFML code and to make some tags functional.

This project will require a number of coders to produce a fully operational CFML layer on top of PHP.

The whole task will be way too big for one coder alone.

Enjoy !

• Marco.