Babelj

Links Babelj Links Download Babelj v0.1 The license for Babelj (LGPL >= v2) Made some changes to Babelj? Send them in. Related Programming Links Java PHP Apache Credits Timothy W Macinta (Babelj author) //pharmatrak (sponsor of initial development)

What is Babelj? Babelj is a language server for Java. It allows programs written in practically any language to fully interact with Java. Client libraries currently exist for PHP3 and Java. Babelj can be used as an out of the box bridge between PHP and Java and adding support for new languages is a snap as well. Why use Babelj? Here are a few reasons why you might find Babelj useful: You want to connect to Java from PHP. Babelj is particularly useful for this as there is already a PHP3 client. You want to connect to Java from a language that is not supported by Java's native methods. You want to connect to a remotely running Java VM from a language other than Java.

State of development

Babelj was developed by Tim Macinta as part of a contract project for //pharmatrak. It is no longer being used due to a change in the design of the underlying system, but it is at a state where it will definitely be of use to others out there. It is not currently under active development by the original developer, however outside contributions are accepted and encouraged. Hopefully you will find it useful. It is a credit to //pharmatrak to note that they were enthusiastic about open-sourcing Babelj even when it was under active development.

Documentation

Most of the code is (hopefully) self explanatory if you read the method names. There are a few specific things that I will mention here to get you started. The Babelj distribution also contains Javadoc documentation.

• You can start the server with the command java net.pharmatrak.babelj.BabeljServer [port] . If you don't specify a port number it will default to 9988.
• To see how to use the PHP client first take a look at the file babelj_tests.php3 (this was used to test the PHP client when it was written, hence the name). It shows how to connect to the Babelj server and then manipulate objects and call methods on the Java VM. Once it starts making sense, take a look at babelj.php3. All of the functions in the "user callable" section are available for you to use.
• To write your own client for another language, the easiest thing to do is to port the code from the Java client to the desired language. This is how the PHP client was written. (If you're wondering why a Java client was written at all considering that RMI is much better for Java-to-Java action, it was written to test the server and to make porting to new languages easier.) The Java client is in the net.pharmatrak.babelj.test package.

Licensing

Babelj may be redistributed under the GNU LGPL (GNU Library General Public License) version 2 or later. In short, this means that if you redistribute Babelj or a modified version of it (alone or as part of another product) you must also distribute the source code (including the code to your modifications of Babelj). You should read the LGPL if you haven't before as there are a few other minor restrictions.

Credits

Bablej was written by Tim Macinta one day in the spring of 1999 (ok, so the testing took a day too). There haven't been any outside contributions yet, but when there are some they will appear in this credits list. Initial development was sponsered by //pharmatrak - a place that's very clueful about open source software.