Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : Web Panel Coding

[Bilco105]

I am currently looking to start a project to build a VERY simple web panel. It will be able to start / stop a service. It will be able to reboot a server and it will be able to open a configuration file from a path and allow the user to edit it. What is the best programing language to code this project in? Im looking to it to run on Windows and Linux alike if possible. What are your ideas on this type of project? Thanks in advance.

[itspot]

Your question contains the answer Im looking to it to run on Windows and Linux alike if possible - in this case the only platform among the currently existing, which satisfies your requirements, is JAVA.

[brianoz]

When you say you want it to run on both WIndows and LInux, do you mean as client or server? I assume you mean client not server. If you mean client, then of course the panel will run on both as it is browser based. If you mean server, these will be completely utterly different on the two server types, apart from some presentation code most of the code to actually do things won't be the same.

Java is probably going to be a dog to do this in, PHP runs on both and might be better for you. But if it's trivial enough it might be easier to write the Windows end in ASP/VB and the Linux end in PHP.

[itspot]

Yes, I completely forgot about PHP. I agree with brianoz: for such a simple task that could be the solution.

[nulled]

YEs PHP is recommended if you want it to run on both WIndows and LInux.

COnverting PHP from Linux to Windows is relatively easy mostly involving the paths on the server containing the files.

WIndows using \
Linux uses /

If you want to see the power of PHP and what it can do ... check out my PHP control panel in my signature below.

[krumms]

COnverting PHP from Linux to Windows is relatively easy mostly involving the paths on the server containing the files.

WIndows using \
Linux uses /

If you're writing applications with cross platform compatability in mind, you shouldn't be hard coding filesystem separators. Use DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR instead.

All that said and done, there's much more to porting applications than simply replacing filesystem separators. It's unusual to find Windows boxes running sendmail/postfix, proftpd and/or BIND for example, so you'll have to rewrite that functionality for Windows (even if it's behind an abstraction layer, you've still got to do the work). Even Apache on Win32 in a production environment isn't all that common.

If you're restricting yourself to only supporting the basics that are fairly well supported on both platforms (Apache, MySQL), you'll likely be fine but you're seriously restricting the number of people who will find your program interesting.

Some of this might be common sense, but hey - people should know by now that I like to rant.