Spanish Open Source Company Offers Tools For PHP Developers To Create Android Apps

An open source venture in Spain is spearheading an effort to augment the development of php applications. The company offers documentation and tools for php developers who wish to produce Android apps.

The project is known as php for Android (PFA and it shores up support for Google's Scripting Layer the Android (SL4A) project. This was earlier tagged the Android Scripting Environment (ASE).

PFA founder and developer Ivan Mosquera Paulo said in a statement,"PFA aims to make php development in Android not only possible but also feasible [by] providing tools and documentation.” Paulo is a software engineer at Irontec, Bilbao, Spain. He added that php support would come on the heels of availability of Android devices for JavaScript, Lua, the Python, and Mosquera Paulo.

Paulo continued to say, "I thought that there was no reason why PHP support couldn't be added, so I started to work on it with my team at Irontec. We were really interested in achieving this because we had already worked in Android development (in a project for Vodafone) but our favorite tool is PHP.'

"We thought that it would be great having PHP available,” he said. Adding, "We thought that this project would be really interesting for any PHP developer. And we have had far more than 10,000 unique visits, so this proves that we were right. We want this project to be a chance for a lot of people for whom there was a huge development wall: Java. ” Java is the major means of actually authoring Android applications.

At the present time, it is possible to operate php scripts on Android through PFA's ASE build. In the very near future, it will be possible to distribute php code as an Android application.

“We're working on this, and this will mean that PHP developers will be able to sell their apps like Java developers do,” said Paulo. He also said that the support of the project is dependent on feedback from the community. Paulo remarked that there has been a lot of interest and expect more people to get involved, reports NetworkWorld