Frequently asked questions

Is this the same with PHPPowerPoint that I found in CodePlex?

No. This one is much better with tons of new features that you can’t find in PHPPowerPoint 0.1. The development in CodePlex is halted and switched to GitHub to allow more participation from the crowd. The more the merrier, right?

I’ve been running PHPPowerPoint from CodePlex flawlessly, but I can’t use the latest PHPPresentation from GitHub. Why?

PHPPresentation requires PHP 5.3+ since v0.2, while PHPPowerPoint v0.1 from CodePlex can run with PHP 5.2.

There’s a lot of new features that we can get from PHP 5.3 and it’s been around since 2009! You should upgrade your PHP version to use PHPPresentation v0.2+.

Why am I getting a class not found error?

If you have followed the instructions for either adding this package to your composer.json or registering the autoloader, then perhaps you forgot to include a use statement for the class(es) you are trying to access.

Here's an example that allows you to refer to the MemoryDrawing class without having to specify the full class name in your code:

<?php

use PhpOffice\PhpPresentation\Shape\MemoryDrawing as MemoryDrawing;

If you have followed the installation instructions and you have added the necessary use statements to your code, then maybe you are still referencing the PHPPowerPoint classes using the old PEAR/PSR-0 approach.

The 0.1 approach to naming classes used verbose class names to avoid namespace collisions with other libraries. For example, the MemoryDrawing class was actually called PHPPowerPoint_Shape_MemoryDrawing.

Version 0.2 of the library renamed the classes, moved to a namespaced approach and switched to the PSR-0 autoloader. Interestingly, old code that was still referencing classes using the verbose approach still worked (which was pretty cool!). This is because the PSR-0 autoloader was correctly translating the verbose class references into the correct file name and location. However, PHPPowerPoint now relies exclusively on the PSR-4 autoloader, so old code that may have been referencing the classes with the verbose class names will need to be updated accordingly.

Why PHPPowerPoint become PHPPresentation ?

As Roman Syroeshko noticed us, PowerPoint is a trademark. For avoiding any problems with Microsoft, we decide to change the name to a more logic name, with our panel of readers/writers.