How to set up a server for Android applications in PHP

In today's Internet era, mobile applications have become an indispensable part of people's lives. In order to ensure the stability and high-speed operation of the application, we need to use a server to manage and control the application. In this article, we will introduce how to use PHP language to build an Android application server.

1. Install PHP

Before we start, we need to install PHP first. Since we need to use PHP7 to run the application, we need to install PHP7 and its related extensions. In Linux systems, we can execute the following command to install.

sudo apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-curl php7.0-mysqli php7.0-json

This command will install PHP and its related extensions. On Mac OS systems, you can use the Homebrew package manager to install PHP.

brew install php70

After the installation is completed, we also need to add the PHP installation path to the environment variable so that we can run PHP related instructions in the terminal.

2. Install Android SDK and NDK

After installing PHP, we also need to install Android SDK and NDK, which are development tools related to Android applications. Before installation, we need to install Java JDK first, because both Android SDK and NDK require a Java environment.

In Linux systems, we can execute the following command to install Java JDK.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

In Mac OS systems, you can download the Java JDK installation package from the Oracle official website for installation.

After installing the Java JDK, we next need to install the Android SDK. You can download the SDK installation package from the Android official website, unzip it and run SDK Manager to install it.

In Linux systems, you can execute the following command to install Android SDK.

sudo apt-get install android-sdk

In Mac OS systems, you can use the Homebrew package manager to install the Android SDK.

brew install android-sdk

After installing the Android SDK, we need to install the Android NDK. You can download the NDK installation package from the official Android website, unzip it and use it.

3. Build an Android application server

Next, let’s get to the point—building an Android application server. We can use PHP's Swoole extension to build a high-concurrency performance server. Swoole is a PHP-based network communication framework that supports asynchronous non-blocking IO and can help us easily build high-performance Android application servers.

First, we need to execute the following command in the terminal to install the Swoole extension.

pecl install swoole

After the installation is complete, we also need to enable the Swoole extension in the PHP configuration file. In Linux systems, we can edit the /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini file and add the following content to the file.

extension=swoole.so

Then, we need to create a PHP file to build the service. Below is a simple example code.

$serv = new swoole_server("127.0.0.1", 9501);

$serv->on('Connect', function ( $serv, $fd) {

echo "Client: Connect.\n";

});

$serv->on('Receive', function ($serv, $fd, $from_id, $data) {

$serv->send($fd, 'Server: '.$data);

});

$serv->on('Close', function ($serv, $fd) {

echo "Client: Close.\n";

});

$serv->start();

The first line of code is to create a Swoole server, which listens to port 127.0.0.1:9501. Then, we define three callback functions: Connect, Receive and Close.

The Connect function is called when the client connects to the server. The Receive function is called when receiving data from the client. Here we simply return the data intact to the client. The Close function is called when the client disconnects. Finally, we start the server by calling the start function.

4. Writing Applications

From the previous steps, we have successfully built an Android application server. Now, we need to write an application to connect to this server.

In Android applications, we can use the HttpURLConnection class to connect to the network. We can use the following code snippet to connect to the server.

URL url = new URL("http://127.0.0.1:9501");
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
//Set the request method
connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
//Set the connection timeout period
connection.setConnectTimeout(5000);
//Set the read timeout period
connection.setReadTimeout(5000);
//Send a request
connection.connect();
//Read the data returned by the server
InputStream inputStream = connection.getInputStream();
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( inputStream));
String line = "";
StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder();
while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {

response.append(line);

}
bufferedReader.close();
inputStream.close();

In this code, we first create a URL object to specify the server address and port number, and then create an HttpURLConnection object for network connection. After completing the setup of the request, we call the connect() function to send the request and read the data returned by the server by reading the input stream. Finally, we close the BufferedReader and InputStream objects.

5. Summary

Through this article, we learned how to use PHP language to build an Android application server, and wrote an Android application to connect to the server. Throughout the process, we used PHP7, Android SDK, NDK, and Swoole extensions, all essential tools for modern mobile app development. This is a very practical tutorial for future application developers.

This article is just a simple example. You can modify the code according to your specific needs to adapt to different application scenarios. I hope this article can help you understand how to use PHP to build an Android application server.

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