28.15 slice2php Command-Line Options

The Slice-to-PHP compiler, slice2php, offers the following command-line options in addition to the standard options described in Section 4.20:

• ‑‑all

Generate code for all Slice definitions, including those included by the main Slice file.

• ‑n, --namespace

Generate code using PHP namespaces. Note that namespaces are only supported in PHP 5.3 or later. Also note that the Ice extension for PHP must be built with namespace support enabled.

• ‑‑checksum

Generate checksums for Slice definitions.

Compiler Output

For each Slice file X.ice, slice2php generates PHP code into a file named X.php in the output directory. The default output directory is the current working directory, but a different directory can be specified using the ‑‑output‑dir option.

Include Files

It is important to understand how slice2php handles include files. In the absence of the ‑‑all option, the compiler does not generate PHP code for Slice definitions in included files. Rather, the compiler translates Slice #include statements into PHP require statements in the following manner:

1. Determine the full pathname of the included file.

2. Create the shortest possible relative pathname for the included file by iterating over each of the include directories (specified using the ‑I option) and removing the leading directory from the included file if possible.

For example, if the full pathname of an included file is /opt/App/slice/OS/Process.ice, and we specified the options ‑I/opt/App and ‑I/opt/App/slice, then the shortest relative path­name is OS/Process.ice after removing /opt/App/slice.

3. Replace the .ice extension with .php. Continuing our example from the previous step, the translated require statement becomes

require "OS/Process.php";

As a result, you can use ‑I options to tailor the require statements generated by the compiler in order to avoid absolute path names and match the organiza­tional structure of your application’s source files.