Re: [Discussion] FFI in PHP

On 05/02/17 23:25, Alex Bowers wrote: > And here is the previous messaging without borked formatting. Sorry folks. > > > FFI RFC > ====== .. > Example > === > > Take an example of a rust program that takes two numbers in and gives > you the sum of them. > > ```rust > #[no_mangle] > pub extern fn add(a: i32, b: i32) -> i32 { > a + b > } > > ``` > > with the Cargo.toml file containing: > > ``` > [package] > name = "math" > version = "0.1.0" > authors = ["Alex Bowers <bowersbros@gmail.com>"] > > [dependencies] > > [lib] > name = "math" > crate-type = ["dylib"] > ``` > > cargo build --release will create > .so, .dylib, or > .dll files > depending on your system. > > These should be usable within PHP using the exposed functions. > > ```php > $math = ffi("/path/to/math.so"); > $result = $math->add(1, 5); > > echo $result; // 6 > ``` With ext/psi [1], that would work differently. You wouldn't define the interface at runtime, like the above example, pecl/ffi [2] or MFFI [3]. First, you would create an interface description file (a PSI file [4]), where you specify the native declaration and the library to load: ``` // https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi#lib lib "/path/to/math.so"; // https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi#declarations extern int32_t add(int32_t a, int32_t b); ``` The PHP interface to this function would usually be defined in the same file possibly looking along the following lines: ``` // https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi#implementations function math\add(int $a, int $b) : int { let a = intval($a); let b = intval($b); return to_int(add); } ``` Those PSI files would be loaded from a directory configured in php.ini (psi.directory) and loaded at startup, i.e. the interfaces would be available to user land for the lifetime of the process, not the request. Have a look at the complete libidn example [5] of the README or the sqlite test [6] utilizing a user land callback. I've been working on ext/psi for the good parts of more than a year now, and I would be more than happy about insights, suggestions or collaboration with other interested parties. The (currently) two major to-dos are decent CPP support in the parser, so one could basically just parse C headers, and levelling out support for input/output marshalling, which currently differ in sophistication, AFAIR, while quite a lot is already possible. Other random bits can be found in the TODO [7]. It has been successfully built and run on Linux and OSX but YMMV; also, grab a coffee when building the first time, because configure performs a ton of checks for POSIX builtins (still like, 10% only yet), so don't forget the -C/--cache-file switch. [1] https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi [2] https://pecl.php.net/ffi [3] https://github.com/mgdm/MFFI [4] https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi#psi-files [5] https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi#complete-example [6] https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi/tree/master/tests/sqlite [7] https://github.com/m6w6/ext-psi/blob/master/TODO -- Regards, Mike

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