Building a Mobile Friendly Version of PHP Applications

With the growth of mobile web usage, PHP developers are increasingly looking to solutions to deliver their applications to a wider array of audiences. While compiling PHP code directly into proprietary Apple OS formats is challenging even with modern tools, there are emerging technologies which allow developers to adapt their PHP-based sites into mobile friendly versions.

Delivering an application that renders properly through a browser can provide a solution to effectively scale PHP applications to a broader array of potential mobile users. While PHP natively has the ability to detect a user’s device (with some limitations), it’s a greater challenge to craft a solution that can properly render a PHP-based site for a mobile device. There are PHP libraries and APIs that have a full cache of browser based codes so you can identify a user based upon the specific type of web browser in use. With the growing number of browser versions and mobile solutions, however, to properly scale up a PHP site requires going beyond static detection and into a more complete approach to PHP mobile detection and deployment.

One solution for this issue is cross-platform frameworks which allow you to deploy PHP sites in a variety of settings. While the growing number of mobile standards potentially complicates a direct port of a PHP based application, this guide can provide insights into best practices for PHP development. One example platform is Titanium, which is designed to help render PHP based applications for the mobile web.

As an open source platform, developers can begin building a code base that can scale across a variety of devices including mobile users. With a set of APIs for web as well as iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms, you can build on a common code base to deploy a solution across a variety of platforms. With over 200 APIs the solution provides the ability to cleanly (mostly) port a native web-based application across a variety of platforms. Working directly with mobile SDK solutions, you can port your PHP based application into a native mobile application for the major platforms. Although this solution is elegant it cannot cover the full breadth of mobile platform distribution required for modern sites. As a result, it’s important to consider (nearly) universal solutions for properly rendering PHP sites across a growing array of device types.

One solution is a PHP class library which utilizes WML standards to help render the code in XML for reading on mobile devices. Preferred to a WAP solution, HAW-HAW (HTML and WML hybrid adapted web server) aims to create a PHP library for multi device mobile rendering. Rendered in XML, the solution can be implemented natively in PP with a hawhaw.inc file on any PHP server. With a custom JavaScript library you can render your solution with a variety of features across devices. As a result you can render a side in HTML, WML and a variety of other formats that are nearly universally rendered across mobile devices. Finding a nearly universal solution to render PHP sites can help streamline the process of delivering your application to mobile users.