Re: Single Point of Entry Apps.

On 05.09.2016 at 18:03, Michael Morris wrote: > Something I was reminded of during the discussion of replacing pear with > composer that I thought was worthy of it's own thread. Most PHP apps I've > seen that use composer are > single point of entry apps - that is there's one front controller, usually > index.php, and .htaccess rules are put in place that route all requests to > that file. > > These apps then go through the process of initializing themselves and > sometimes there are thousands of lines of code that get parsed through > before the app is in ready state, the router finally loaded and a decision > is made concerning the user's request. > > This is extremely inefficient > > What can be done in PHP core to more effectively embrace this paradigm > without disturbing the current one? That's what this thread is to > discuss. Here's my stab at it. > > Create an .htaccess directive that allows a php file to be a directory > handler. When that directive is set the webserver will pass any > non-existent file request to PHP (in effect becoming a one line replacement > for a very common usage of mod_rewrite). > > When this directive is used two statements will be looked for by the > runtime - first a ready statement (not necessarily named "ready"). When it > is reached PHP will save the application state, clone it and continue > working from the clone. On all all subsequent requests to the directory PHP > will start by creating a new clone and working from there. > > The second statement instructs PHP to drop the saved state and load a new > one starting with the next request (graceful) or to kill any concurrent > workers (panic) > > This isn't the same as opcode caching - this would be caching of the entire > application state including any data harvested from config file reads or > database calls. > > It is possible to create this setup now using some PHP worker process > trickery, but it isn't easy. > > Again, the above may not be a possible solution - but there's got to be a > better way than the current approach which amounts to installing the > application on every single request. > > Thank you all for your time. Not long ago (something like) this has already been proposed, see <http://news.php.net/php.internals/92249>ff. -- Christoph M. Becker