The PHPlib base library requires a working web server with CGI capability and the CGI version of PHP 3.0.12 or higher installed. Alternatively mod_php can be used. Lower versions of PHP do not work at all: The session class uses the base64_encode() and base64_decode() functions which are known to be buggy in lower versions (up to 3.0.7) of the library. Also, the OOH Forms classes are using constructor syntax, which has been introduced into the PHP language in 3.0.5 and later versions. An issue with the $PHP_SELF variable and CGI PHP has been resolved with version 3.0.5 and later. Perl regular expression functions are being used in the Template class and these are not really avilable up to 3.0.12.
Note: If you are using CGI PHP, it must have been compiled with the --enable-force-cgi-redirect switch for $PHP_SELF to have the correct value.
Basically, if PHP_SELF is the exact local part of your $URL, all is well. If it instead contains the modified URL with /your cgi-bin/php prefixed, you have a buggy version of CGI PHP. Either upgrade your version of PHP or replace all occurrences of $PHP_SELF with $PATH_INFO in PHPlib
Note: PHPlib requires that you have track_vars compiled in and enabled.
The PHP base library requires a database connection in the default setup for storage of session variables, but this can be circumvented by selection another storage container type at installation time. Currently, storage containers are available for SQL databases (the default), SQL databases with limited string length (ct_split_sql.inc), System V shared memory (requires a PHP interpreter with SYSVSHM and SYSVSEM support), LDAP servers (requires a PHP interpreter with LDAP support), flat files, and DBM files.
Using SQL, currently MySQL is fully supported and PostgreSQL, mSQL, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, ODBC and Oracle have limited support (the limitation is only relevant if you intend to access metadata information, i.e. table definitions and the like). Database interfaces are not difficult to write and you can easily write your own interface.
You need a database server connection with select, insert, update and delete privileges from your CGI environment. You need create and drop privileges from an administrative account outside your CGI environment as well.
PHPlib core functionality requires two tables as part of your application table name space: active_sessions (select, insert, update and delete privilege required for the application user) and auth_user (select privilege required for the application user. insert, update and delete privilege required for the application user if user management is to be done from within the application).
Extended functionality may require additional tables.
PHPlib tries to be as name space neutral as possible with its core features. There is issues no HTML by default and it occupies only few names in the global name space. These are the class names for the classes defined: DB_Sql, DB_SAM, CT_Sql, Session, Auth, Perm, User .
Additionally, the classnames DB_Example, Example_CT_Sql, Example_Session, Example_Auth, Example_Challenge_Auth, Example_Perm and Example_User are defined by the sample setup in local.inc, but these names can and should be customized by the application developer.
PHPlib defines the function names page_open(), page_close, sess_load() and sess_save() for the page management functions. The global variable $_PHPLIB (a hash) is taken. Only if page_open() is being used, globals are defined by the library by default, but one global for each "feature" requested in the page_open() statement is taken. These are at most $sess, $user, $auth and $perm.