title: Use DLL in PHP?
body: <p>I'm not going to lie. I'm not all the familiar with Windows and COM objects. That's why i'm here. First of all is it possible to access a DLL from within a PHP script running out of Apache? In my journey around the internets i believe that i have 2 options:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>compile the dll as an extension for PHP. (i didn't make this dll)</li>
  <li>access the DLL as a COM object which is sort of what it's designed for anyways. </li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>So i'm taking the COM approach. </p>
  
  <pre><code>try{
    $com = new COM('WHAT_GOES_HERE');
  } catch(Exception $e){
      echo 'error: ' . $e-&gt;getMessage(), "\n";
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How do i go about finding out what would go into the initialization string? is there a com viewer type program i could/should be using to find this out? the documentation associated with this DLL doesn't seem to specify what strings i should be using to initialize but gets very in-depth into what streams are available, and all sorts of fun stuff. just gotta past this initial hump. Please help!</p>