Learn C++ development and easily develop PHP7/8 extensions

Learn C development and easily develop PHP7/8 extensions

In recent years, PHP has been one of the most widely used programming languages ​​in the field of Internet development. It is flexible, simple, easy to learn, and supported by a large development community. However, due to the limitations and performance bottlenecks of PHP itself, sometimes we need to use C to write PHP extensions to improve performance and complete some low-level operations.

This article aims to introduce how to learn C development so that you can easily develop PHP7/8 extensions. We will start with setting up the environment, gradually introduce the basic knowledge of C development, and demonstrate it through practical examples.

First, we need to set up a C development environment. For Windows users, you can install integrated development environments such as Visual Studio or CodeBlocks. For Linux or Mac users, you can use the gcc/g compiler for development. In addition, you need to install the PHP development package in order to compile the extension.

Next, we need to understand the basics of C. C is an object-oriented programming language. It inherits the characteristics of the C language and extends many new features, such as classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, etc. We need to learn C's syntax, various data types, flow control, functions, pointers, references and other basic knowledge.

In the process of learning C, it is also very important to understand how to interact with PHP. PHP provides a set of APIs for us to develop extensions. We can use these APIs to compile C code into PHP-recognizable extensions and interact with PHP code. For example, you can call C functions or access C member variables in PHP code through the API.

Let's look at a simple example to demonstrate how to use C to develop PHP extensions. Suppose we need to develop an extension that computes the nth term of the Fibonacci sequence. First, we need to create a C source file and define a Fibonacci class. The specific code is as follows:

#include <php.h>

class Fibonacci {
public:
    int calculate(int n) {
        if (n <= 1) {
            return n;
        } else {
            return calculate(n-1) + calculate(n-2);
        }
    }
};

ZEND_METHOD(fibonacci, calculate) {
    long n;
    if (zend_parse_parameters(ZEND_NUM_ARGS(), "l", &n) == FAILURE) {
        RETURN_NULL();
    }
    Fibonacci fib;
    int result = fib.calculate(n);
    RETURN_LONG(result);
}

zend_function_entry fibonacci_methods[] = {
    ZEND_ME(fibonacci, calculate, NULL, ZEND_ACC_PUBLIC)
    {NULL, NULL, NULL}
};

zend_module_entry fibonacci_module_entry = {
    STANDARD_MODULE_HEADER,
    "fibonacci",
    fibonacci_methods,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    "0.1",
    STANDARD_MODULE_PROPERTIES
};

#ifdef COMPILE_DL_FIBONACCI
ZEND_GET_MODULE(fibonacci)
#endif

The above code defines a Fibonacci class, in which the calculate method is responsible for calculating the Fibonacci sequence. n items. Then, use the ZEND_METHOD macro to define a PHP extension method and call the C method inside the method to calculate the result. Finally, the extended entry function and module-related information are defined.

After writing the above code, we need to compile and generate the extension. Run the following command in the command line:

phpize
./configure --with-php-config=<path_to_php-config>
make
sudo make install

The above command will generate a fibonacci.so file. We only need to copy it to the PHP extension directory and add the following configuration to php.ini:

extension=fibonacci.so

After that, restart the PHP service to use this extension. We can use this extension in PHP code, for example:

<?php
$ext = new Fibonacci();
echo $ext->calculate(10);
?>

Through this simple example, we can see how to use C to develop PHP extensions. Of course, this is just an entry-level tutorial on C development. There are many other knowledge and skills that we need to learn and master. But by learning C development, we can easily develop high-performance PHP extensions to meet the needs of our applications.

To summarize, by learning C development and mastering the knowledge of interacting with PHP, we can easily develop PHP7/8 extensions. This can not only improve performance, but also complete some low-level operations. I hope this article is helpful to you, and I wish you go further and further on the road of C development and PHP extension!

The above is the detailed content of Learn C++ development and easily develop PHP7/8 extensions. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!