Is there anything like CoffeeScript for PHP?

Ruby to PHP: http://www.fructoselang.org/

The pressure to produce such solutions are less than in the ecosystem, because on the browser you traditionally can't run native code*; but on any server where you can run , you can generally run native code (at least if it's your server) so there is little technical reason why you can't directly switch to a higher level language and not use PHP as an intermediate. For example, , which can be compiled to native code. But it sounds like you really want or, say, . If you don't want to run the standard interpreters for some reason, have you considered language front-ends targeting the ? Update: I am not endorsing this—I think it's a myopic and futile idea—but you might be interested in http://code.google.com/p/phpreboot/ *—but see Google NaCl: http://code.google.com/chrome/nativeclient/

As of today, I would suggest looking at these:  - Haxe: http://haxe.org/  - Pharen: http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/ Haxe has been deployed to production and has quite a community, although with controversial reviews, mostly due to the fact that its wide scope, as it aims to compile to different languages (not only PHP), might complicate things for some people. Pharen mimics a Lisp-like language, looks promising, although with few people working on it (maybe 2), and lacking real data about usage in production environments (as of beginning of 2011). You can get more information about a similar question here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36241/your-experience-with-haxe-and-other-languages-that-compile-to-php

This is EXACTLY what you're looking for: http://mammouth.wamalaka.com

You might want to take a step back and ask why you would need something CoffeeScript-like that compiles to PHP at all. If you find that PHP isn't working for you, so much so that you wish it was something else, why not just use something else? You shouldn't feel like you are locked into a single development platform. Unless you'll be fired for handing over code that doesn't smell like PHP. If that's the case, I'll leave the soul searching to you. CoffeeScript and node.js are best buddies, and node.js runs server-side just like PHP (only different). If you like the way CoffeeScript works you would be far better off embracing it fully. And it sounds like what you really want deep down. You don't have to break up with PHP to start hanging out with node.js (or Scala, or Ruby, or all of them together), you are in a totally open relationship, they all get along with each other. Maybe a little tiff here and there, but you'll be able to smooth it over. Without knowing your particulars, pick the best tool for the job and consider using what you feel most comfortable with, you'll be happier and more productive in the long run.

Not that I'm aware of, but I think some would find it useful. Just like a CoffeeScript/JavaScript app can work on many browsers with zero configuration by the user, a LAMP app can work on many hosting accounts with very little configuration by the site owner. This is right down to the .htaccess and standardizing on MySQL. There are hundreds of open source PHP apps written this way. I also think it might be nice to automatically generate parameterized queries just like CoffeeScript does string interpolation.

This is just my personal opinion of the preprocessors that have made their way into front-end development and web design over the past few years (namely SASS, LESS, HAML, CoffeeScript, etc). Personally, I like them a great deal. They allow me to churn out a lot of HTML, CSS and JavaScript in a very short time. But consider that PHP can be written in an object oriented manner. This allows the programmer a level of abstraction that is simply not present in HTML, CSS and to some degree plain old vanilla JS. This is not to say that it can't be done, but if you're compelled to use PHP in your project, wouldn't a framework like Zend, CodeIgniter or Laravel better suit your needs?

We're currently working on Gutscript (a language that compiles to PHP) please see http://github.com/c9s/gutscript