[Php-java-bridge-users] Starting the JavaBridge from PHP

[<php...@li...>]

Hi all,

for a PHP application I'm building, under certain circumstances I need to
communicate to a java backend (not always).
Therefore, I only need to use the bridge on occasions and wish to minimize
the time the bridge is actually running.

>From the doc I gathered that I can use a cmd like  'java -jar JavaBridge.jar
LOCAL:9200 3 JavaBridge.log' to
start the bridge. Called from php this would allow me to start the bridge.
However, I would only want to do
this once, since for all subsequent communication I would want to use the
existing bridge. Also,
at some point I would want to shut down the bridge. My questions are
therefore:

1) Is it possible to test whether a Java bridge is running?
2) If not 1), what happens if i try to start another bridge on the 9200
port? This is simply ignored? Or is some error given?
3) Is there an explicit way of shutting down the bridge?

Thanks for anyone who has some insight in this.
Cheers,
Bart