PHP Fun and Games

Meanwhile, also at the Lang.Net event, Tomas Petricek, a Phalanger contributor and Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for C#, demonstrated a Phalanger Helicopter Game, a game written purely in PHP that runs in a browser as a Silverlight control.

Petricek said Phalanger is an abbreviation of “PHP Language Compiler.” It was originally targeted at the .Net Framework 1.1, but now supports .Net 2.0, the open-source Mono platform and Silverlight, he said.

“We’re planning to use parts of the DLR in the future,” Petricek said.

Phalanger has progressed over the year, he said. Developers can now compile various open-source PHP applications for .Net, use .Net classes from PHP programs or write PHP applications in Silverlight, Petricek said.

“The goal was to make it as similar [on .Net] to other dynamic languages as possible—like Iron Python and IronRuby,” he said.

Meanwhile, Petricek said PHP is a good language for Silverlight because it provides dynamic access to XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) elements, it is good for working with attached properties, and developers can use functions from the PHP library, among other reasons.

Moreover, with Phalanger, PHP becomes a first-class language for developing ASP.Net component-based Web applications and Web services, as well as console and WinForms applications, Microsoft officials said.

Phalanger is distributed via the Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License.