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Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 12:51:53 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [Discussion] FFI in PHP
From: mike@php.net (Michael Wallner)

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From: Michael Wallner <mike@php.net>
To: Alex Bowers <bowersbros@gmail.com>, PHP <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [Discussion] FFI in PHP
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On 05/02/17 23:25, Alex Bowers wrote:
> And here is the previous messaging without borked formatting. Sorry fol=
ks.
>=20
>=20
> FFI RFC
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
=2E..
> Example
> =3D=3D=3D
>=20
> Take an example of a rust program that takes two numbers in and gives
> you the sum of them.
>=20
> ```rust
> #[no_mangle]
> pub extern fn add(a: i32, b: i32) -> i32 {
>     a + b
> }
>=20
> ```
>=20
> with the Cargo.toml file containing:
>=20
> ```
> [package]
> name =3D "math"
> version =3D "0.1.0"
> authors =3D ["Alex Bowers <bowersbros@gmail.com>"]
>=20
> [dependencies]
>=20
> [lib]
> name =3D "math"
> crate-type =3D ["dylib"]
> ```
>=20
> `cargo build --release` will create `.so`, `.dylib`, or `.dll` files
> depending on your system.
>=20
> These should be usable within PHP using the exposed functions.
>=20
> ```php
> $math =3D ffi("/path/to/math.so");
> $result =3D $math->add(1, 5);
>=20
> 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 $b) : int {
	let a =3D intval($a);
	let b =3D 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

--=20
Regards,
Mike


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