Why on earth would you want this?!?!?

Imagine that you have to deploy something in php. You don't have a choice. You HAVE to.

php_var_dump lets you do all your data processing and management in python. You can then convert your native python data structures into php code, which can then be saved as include fles for php.

Other python modules that can accomplish the general idea:

phpserialize

implements the PHP serialize/unserialize functions in python allows you to serialize a python data structure to PHP allows you to unserialize a php data structure to Python

simplejson

there are json parsers in php, which can read code you save

The main benefit of using the var_dump method, is that there is no overhead in loading/unloading/parsing/etc.

This method allows you to build a php include file that simply runs fast, and that can use multiple includes within the filesystem as a "database" like system. This way you don't have to set up any databases, libraries, or whatever - you can just deploy PHP code without coding much in PHP.

Usage

>>> from php_var_dump import php_var_dump
>>> data= "Hello World"
>>> as_php = php_var_dump( 'var', data )
>>> print as_php
$var = 'Hello World';

You'd probable then want to save it...

data_string= "<?phpnn%snn?>" % as_php open('data.php','w').write(data_string.encode( "utf-8" ))

Then just include that file in your php programs.

There's also a php_as_block function, which does the trivial encapsulation as above.