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# VIII. COM support functions for Windows

# Introduction

COM is a technology which allows the reuse of code written in any language (by any language) using a standard calling convention and hiding behind APIs the implementation details such as what machine the Component is stored on and the executable which houses it. It can be thought of as a super Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanism with some basic object roots. It separates implementation from interface.

COM encourages versioning, separation of implementation from interface and hiding the implementation details such as executable location and the language it was written in.

# Requirements

COM functions are only available on the Windows version of PHP.

# Installation

There is no installation needed to use these functions; they are part of the PHP core.

# Runtime Configuration

The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in `php.ini`.

Table 1. Com configuration options

Name | Default | Changeable
--- | --- | ---
com.allow_dcom | "0" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM
com.autoregister_typelib | "0" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM
com.autoregister_verbose | "0" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM
com.autoregister_casesensitive | "1" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM
com.typelib_file | "" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM

For further details and definition of the PHP_INI_* constants see ini_set().

# Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.

`CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER` (integer)

`CLSCTX_INPROC_HANDLER` (integer)

`CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER` (integer)

`CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER` (integer)

`CLSCTX_SERVER` (integer)

`CLSCTX_ALL` (integer)

`VT_NULL` (integer)

`VT_EMPTY` (integer)

`VT_UI1` (integer)

`VT_I2` (integer)

`VT_I4` (integer)

`VT_R4` (integer)

`VT_R8` (integer)

`VT_BOOL` (integer)

`VT_ERROR` (integer)

`VT_CY` (integer)

`VT_DATE` (integer)

`VT_BSTR` (integer)

`VT_DECIMAL` (integer)

`VT_UNKNOWN` (integer)

`VT_DISPATCH` (integer)

`VT_VARIANT` (integer)

`VT_I1` (integer)

`VT_UI2` (integer)

`VT_UI4` (integer)

`VT_INT` (integer)

`VT_UINT` (integer)

`VT_ARRAY` (integer)

`VT_BYREF` (integer)

`CP_ACP` (integer)

`CP_MACCP` (integer)

`CP_OEMCP` (integer)

`CP_UTF7` (integer)

`CP_UTF8` (integer)

`CP_SYMBOL` (integer)

`CP_THREAD_ACP` (integer)

# See Also

For further information on COM read the COM specification or perhaps take a look at Don Box's Yet Another COM Library (YACL)

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