Should I write cgi in pure C or write php extension?

In network development, it is often necessary to use CGI or PHP to achieve dynamic display of web pages. For both technologies, there are advantages and disadvantages. So, which technology should we choose to use? In my opinion, it depends on the specific situation. This article will discuss the choice of writing cgi or php expansion in pure C from the perspective of their respective advantages and disadvantages.

1. About CGI

CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface". It is a protocol that provides standards for interaction between web servers and applications. When using CGI, when the application requests data, the web server passes the request to the CGI program. After the CGI program receives the request, it processes the data and returns it to the server.

Advantages:

1. High flexibility: Because of the increasing number of environment variables, CGI programs are not restricted by programming languages ​​and can be written in various languages.

2. Easy to maintain: Since the data processing and display modules are separated, it is easier to maintain.

Disadvantages:

1. Poor performance: Every time the web server calls a CGI program, it needs to be restarted, and operations such as establishing and closing processes will increase the load on the server and affect the performance of the website.

2. High development costs: Because CGI programs need to perform many initialization operations and need to continuously read and write environment variables and other information, the development costs are high.

2. About PHP expansion

PHP expansion refers to compiling functions written in C language (called function prototypes) into dynamic link libraries (.so files), and then loading them in PHP This dynamic link library implements the functions of extending PHP. This method can efficiently implement PHP expansion and save the load on the Web server.

Advantages:

1. High performance: Since the PHP extension is written in C language, compared to the CGI program running in an external process, the load generated by the PHP extension is smaller and the performance is lower. higher.

2. Easy to develop: When developing PHP extensions, you can provide more advanced functions and better performance by encapsulating C functions.

Disadvantages:

1. Not flexible enough: PHP extensions can only be written in C language. If you want to use other languages, you cannot use PHP extensions.

2. High requirements for PHP writing: If you want to write PHP extensions, you need to have a certain C language foundation and be familiar with the internal principles of PHP, otherwise it will be difficult to develop.

3. Write cgi in pure C or write php expansion?

Now let’s answer the initial question: Write cgi in pure C or write php extension? In this regard, my suggestion is:

1. If you want to achieve more flexible functions, you can choose to write cgi in pure C. For example, when performing some advanced data processing, you may need to exchange data with other systems. In this case, it will be more convenient to use CGI.

2. If you need to achieve more efficient performance, you can choose to write a PHP extension. If your website has a large number of visits, using CGI programs may cause server performance to decrease. At this time, using PHP extension is a more sensible choice.

How to choose depends on the specific situation. But no matter which technology we choose, we need to conduct in-depth research and understanding of it in order to better use them to achieve our web development needs.

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