Enable Ming/SWF support in PHP

[cjnoyes]

There is some neat functionality in php to be able to generate flash files (.swf), there are two groups of that functionality. It would be helpful if these could be included the next time you rebuild php

this is from the php.net site documentation

the older one ...
PHP offers the ability to create Shockwave Flash files via Paul Haeberli's libswf module.

Note: SWF support was added in PHP 4 RC2.
The libswf does not have support for Windows. The development of that library has been stopped, and the source is not available to port it to another systems.
For up to date SWF support take a look at the MING functions.

You need the libswf library to compile PHP with support for this extension. You can download libswf at ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/graphics/grafica/flash/.


Once you have libswf all you need to do is to configure --with-swf[=DIR] where DIR is a location containing the directories include and lib. The include directory has to contain the swf.h file and the lib directory has to contain the libswf.a file. If you unpack the libswf distribution the two files will be in one directory. Consequently you will have to copy the files to the proper location manually.

the newer one...
First of all: Ming is not an acronym. Ming is an open-source (LGPL) library which allows you to create SWF ("Flash") format movies. Ming supports almost all of Flash 4's features, including: shapes, gradients, bitmaps (pngs and jpegs), morphs ("shape tweens"), text, buttons, actions, sprites ("movie clips"), streaming mp3, and color transforms --the only thing that's missing is sound events.
Note that all values specifying length, distance, size, etc. are in "twips", twenty units per pixel. That's pretty much arbitrary, though, since the player scales the movie to whatever pixel size is specified in the embed/object tag, or the entire frame if not embedded.
Ming offers a number of advantages over the existing PHP/libswf module. You can use Ming anywhere you can compile the code, whereas libswf is closed-source and only available for a few platforms, Windows not one of them. Ming provides some insulation from the mundane details of the SWF file format, wrapping the movie elements in PHP objects. Also, Ming is still being maintained; if there's a feature that you want to see, just let us know ming@opaque.net.
Ming was added in PHP 4.0.5.

To use Ming with PHP, you first need to build and install the Ming library. Source code and installation instructions are available at the Ming home page: http://ming.sourceforge.net/ along with examples, a small tutorial, and the latest news.
Download the ming archive. Unpack the archive. Go in the Ming directory. make. make install.
This will build libming.so and install it into /usr/lib/, and copy ming.h into /usr/include/. Edit the PREFIX= line in the Makefile to change the installation directory.


Example 1. built into PHP (Unix)


mkdir <phpdir>/ext/ming
cp php_ext/* <phpdir>/ext/ming
cd <phpdir>
./buildconf
./configure --with-ming <other config options>



Build and install PHP as usual, restart web server if necessary.
Now either just add extension=php_ming.so to your php.ini file, or put dl('php_ming.so'); at the head of all of your Ming scripts.

[osirion]

Could be useful! I'm for it!

[vovaNux]

Here is a good guide: http://www.lampdocs.com/blog/2008/07...pport-for-php/

[Arctic Fire]

I'd like to see this too. $vote++