Xapian discuss - May 2007 - Debian etch packages of php5-xapians have old style flat function interface

I'm running Debian stable (etch) on a server, and have the following Xapian
packages installed.

root@seagrass:/etc/php5/apache# dpkg -l | grep xap
ii  libxapian-dev                    0.9.9-1                         Development
files for Xapian search engine l
ii  libxapian13                      0.9.9-1                         Search
engine library
ii  php4-xapian                      0.9.9-1.1                       Xapian
search engine interface for PHP4
ii  php5-xapian                      0.9.9-1.1                       Xapian
search engine interface for PHP5
ii  python-xapian                    0.9.9-1.1                       Xapian
search engine interface for Python
ii  xapian-doc                       0.9.9-1                         Core Xapian
documentation
ii  xapian-examples                  0.9.9-1                         Xapian
simple example programs
ii  xapian-tools                     0.9.9-1                         Basic tools
for Xapian search engine library

If I use PHP4, things are fine. When I use PHP5, I get "Class
'XapianDatabase' not found" errors.
Upon closer inspection using phpinfo(), get_declared_classes() and
get_defined_functions() I find that:

1) phpinfo says the Xapian module is loaded, version 0.9.9
2) The old style flat functions like new_database are there
3) The new style classes (XapianDatabase etc.) are not there
4) There are no functions or classes containing the text "xap"

Running strings on the .so files for the PHP bindings
    /usr/lib/php4/20050606+lfs/xapian.so
    /usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/xapian.so
confirms that the text XapianDatabase is only present in the PHP4 xapian.so.
And using lsof confirms that Apache has loaded that php5 xapian.so file.

So I'm stumped. Surely the PHP5 bindings should be in the new style OO
interface to Xapian?

I've hunted for other Debian packages of php5-xapian, but can't find any
to
try.

Francis

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 12:28:40AM +0100, Francis Irving
wrote:
> 1) phpinfo says the Xapian module is loaded, version 0.9.9
I'm hoping to sort of debian packages of 1.0.0 next week.
> 2) The old style flat functions like new_database are there
That is expected.

In PHP4, the classes are implemented using calls to the zend API.  But
that technique apparently can't be used for PHP5 for some reason nobody
has ever fully explained to me, so instead SWIG wraps the Xapian API as
flat functions using calls to the zend API from a C++ wrapper, and then
wraps those with class wrappers implemented in PHP.
> 3) The new style classes (XapianDatabase etc.) are not there
I suspect you've not loaded the PHP class wrappers.  I think this note
in the documentation was added after 0.9.9:

    If you're using PHP5, you also need to add `include
"xapian.php"'
    to your PHP scripts which use Xapian in order to get the PHP class
    wrappers.

Cheers,
    Olly