[Php-java-bridge-users] Adding "WebSocket" support to PHP and the PHP/Java Bridge

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

PHP/Java Bridge version 5.5.5 contains a beta version of a web based PHP
debugger called "PHPDebugger.php". At the moment it uses Ajax calls to
connect the JavaScript GUI with the PHPDebugger running on the web server.

These standard Ajax calls are slow, difficult to program and consume an
enormous amount of CPU time, even if the application is idle. We need is a
two-way communication channel to connect the JavaScript GUI with the
PHPDebugger script on the web server.

Google Chrome 4 supports "WebSockets", which allow JavaScript to communicate
with a HTTP script instance without any additional overhead. I will add
"WebSockets" support to both, the PHP script engine and the PHP/Java Bridge
version 5.5.6.

Apache/PHP already supports two-way communications using HTTP/1.1 chunked
connections. Example:

<?php
 $in = fopen("php//input");
 while(!feof($in)) {
  $data = fread($in, 8192);
  echo $data;
  if (ob_get_level()) ob_flush();
  flush();
 }
?>

Only the response headers must be changed according to the WebSocket spec
(Connection: Upgrade instead of Transfer-Encoding: chunked, etc.).

The JavaBridge/PhpFastCGIServlet currently does not support HTTP/1.1 chunked
connections. But changing the PhpFastCGIServlet.java should be easy. All we
need is a second parseBody() method, to be called when the Connection:
Upgrade request header exists.

I will implement it for PHP/Java Bridge 5.5.6.

References:
WebSocket protocol:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol-70
PhpFastCGIServlet:
http://php-java-bridge.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/php-java-bridge/php-java-bridge/server/php/java/servlet/fastcgi/FastCGIServlet.java?view=markup


Regards,
Jost Boekemeier