Is php capable of doing what I want?

Question

Hey stack overflow,

I'm working on a biology web based application and trying to figure out what language to use. The features I need to include are:

• Image viewing frame - This area will display the current image that the biologists wish to see. The application needs to take in a number of coordinates from a file and draw those points on the image displayed here. When the biologist wishes to change images there needs to be no flickering from the refresh. Will do this using multiple image buffers probably. Content needs to be scrollable and able to be zoomed in.
• There need to be labeled buttons that advance, step back, zoom, and play the images displaying in the image frame. There also needs to be some type of list view where images titles can be selected to be displayed.
• There will be a bunch of folders of images on the server that can be selected from. The application must allow the user to select which folder of images to be loaded. It also must be able to read from either an txt or xml file and visually display the information there by way of line graph.
• Would like to be able to run scripts on the server from the application.

I feel that all these things are doable by a web application but I have no idea what language to use. Most people recommend php, but i don't want to delve deeper until I know what its limitations are. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance.

-Mike

Answer 1

You will find almost every server side platforms such as php , asp.net, asp, etc will do all of the above.

Answer 2

PHP is more than capable of doing this. You are going to need to use it in combination with some Javascript to handle the client side effects you describe. I would look into modifying galerific for your needs and then whip up some javascript to write points over the images.

Answer 3

PHP is a language that resides on the server and handles all requests. Javascript (and associated libraries) is a language which is executed by the client's browser and handles (almost) all interaction. PHP is definitely able to do what you want, but for the interaction stuff (particularly the zoom, scrolling, etc.), you'll also need to use Javascript.

So, short answer, PHP is good, but you're going to need to use client-side scripting as well.

Answer 4

From your concerns about image refresh/flicker, it really sounds like a desktop app is what you are looking for, for a rapid response on image changes. The requirements on this really seem to need to be defined better before you can choose a language... PHP can do all the server side stuff you mentioned, but you might have a harder time getting the image viewing "frame" to provide the functionality you want.

Answer 5

PHP can do everything you need for the back end, but most of the stuff that you describe is UI based, and this is dependent on the client, which is, of course, the browser. For highly graphical projects, you can do a lot in JavaScript and some JavaScript libraries have a lot of these capabilities built in. You might also consider Flash or Flex.

You might even consider a desktop application that runs outside of the browser. You can use Java, which is easy to deploy, but still requires the user to have the Java Runtime Engine, or you could go with a language that you can compile down to a native application.

Regardless of the front end technology that you choose, you'll still need a back end, and PHP can handle this.

Answer 6

Due to the image manipulation requirements it might be easier to go with something like flash with a php backend or asp.net with silverlight. It might be difficult to prevent flicker and delays with using pure javascript as opposed to flash/silverlight.

Answer 7

Image viewing frame

This will most likely need to be done on the client side using tools/frameworks such as jQuery, the canvas element, silverlight, or any of the other 100's that are out there.

There need to be labeled buttons that advance, step back, zoom, and play the images displaying in the image frame. There also needs to be some type of list view where images titles can be selected to be displayed.

PHP or any other server-side scripting language could pull this off. If this is meant to be a quick project running on free/cheap hardware then PHP would be a good choice. If the plan is a large application that will have to be maintained over the course of many years and hosting/price is not an issue then I would suggest something like ASP.NET

There will be a bunch of folders of images on the server that can be selected from. The application must allow the user to select which folder of images to be loaded. It also must be able to read from either an txt or xml file and visually display the information there by way of line graph.

Again any server side language could do the folder listing portion. As for reading files and creating graphs, this would most likely be a combination of server side and client side programming. jQuery for example, has plugins that could quite easily take a xml file and create a line graph.

Would like to be able to run scripts on the server from the application.

PHP, ASP.NET - both could do this. I'm sure many others could, but these are the ones i use most often

The issue with PHP is that quite often, the code turns into a mess over time. This is maybe not so much an issue with the language as the people using it and the purpose the app was built for (a quick, one time project). Classic ASP also has the same issues. ASP.NET is a good combination of OOP programming that allows you to separate presentation from logic with minimal effort.