Build Cross-Platform Windowed Apps with PHP

Other PHP-GTK Widgets

PHP-GTK has dozens of other widgets that we can instantiate and use in our application. Here's a list:

• GtkButton: A button that can be clicked on.
• GtkCalendar: A calendar that shows dates that can be selected.
• GtkCheckButton: A check box that can be toggled on and off.
• GtkCList: A list with several columns that can be scrolled.
• GtkColorSelection: A very cool widget that can be used to select colors.
• GtkCombo: A dropdown list that can also accept typed in text.
• GtkCTree: A tree list that can contain nodes that can expand and collapse.
• GtkDialog: A popup dialog that can be modal.
• GtkEntry: A text box with text that can be changed.
• GtkFileSelection: Similar to Windows common dialog control, the GtkFileSelection control displays a dialog allowing us to choose a file on our local machine.
• GtkFontSelection: A widget that allows us to select various font properties.
• GtkFrame: A frame that can contain a caption.
• GtkHRuler: A horizontal ruler.
• GtkHScrollBar: A horizontal scrollbar.
• GtkImage: A widget for displaying an image.
• GtkMenu: A container widget that can hold menu items.
• GtkNoteBook: A tabbed control that can display multiple tabs.
• GtkProgressBar: A bar that can be used to display the progress of some event.
• GtkRadioButton: A radio button that can be grouped.
• GtkSpinButton: Used to increment/decrement a value using arrows.
• GtkToolTips: Used to add tooltips to other widgets.
• GtkVBox: Vertical box container.
• GtkVScrollBar: A vertical scrollbar.
• GtkWindow: An application window.

As you can see from the classes shown above, PHP-GTK contains all of the necessary classes to facilitate the development of a complete cross-platform GUI application.

Building a Database App with PHP-GTK

One of the cool things about PHP-GTK is that it integrates seamlessly with PHP, so we can still use all PHP's regular functions in our PHP-GTK applications. The most popular database to use with PHP is MySQL, so let's create a PHP-GTK app that connects to a MySQL database and retrieves some records.

Enter the following commands at the MySQL console application:

create database people;      
use people;      
     
create table programmers      
(      
pId int auto_increment,      
pName varchar(50),      
pAge tinyint,      
primary key(pId),      
unique id(pId)      
);

Add some people to our programmers' table with the following insert commands:

insert into programmers values(0, 'Bill Smith', 23);      
insert into programmers values(0, 'James Black', 45);      
insert into programmers values(0, 'Lyonel Jones', 18);      
insert into programmers values(0, 'Phil Brown', 22);      
insert into programmers values(0, 'Michael Clay', 56);

Now let's create a PHP-GTK app that connects to our database and retrieves the records from our programmers' table. The app is a bit large to post here in its entirety, so download the support material for this article if you want to test it on your machine.