zphp

A PHP 8.4 runtime written in Zig, with a built-in HTTP server, worker threads, a native extension API, and standalone executables.

zphp run script.php
zphp serve public/index.php --port 8080
zphp build --compile app.php

Read the documentation for everything else.

Compatibility

Every compatibility test runs under both zphp and PHP and must produce the same output. Laravel, WordPress, PHPUnit, and Composer run under their own harnesses. The extensions most applications need are built in, including PDO for SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, cURL, and GD. PHP's C extensions do not load; see what works differently.

Threads

Zphp\Pool runs PHP on several OS threads in one process, each with its own interpreter. PHP needs a thread-safe build and ext-parallel for this; zphp has it built in.

$pool = new Zphp\Pool(workers: 8);
$jobs = [];

foreach (glob('photos/*.jpg') as $path) {
    $jobs[] = $pool->submit(function (string $path) {
        $thumb = imagescale(imagecreatefromjpeg($path), 320);
        imagejpeg($thumb, 'thumbs/' . basename($path));
    }, [$path]);
}

foreach ($jobs as $job) {
    $job->await();
}

A Zphp\Channel streams values between threads while a task runs. Here a worker parses a large CSV while the main thread saves each row:

$rows = new Zphp\Channel(capacity: 100);

$parse = $pool->submit(function (string $path, Zphp\Channel $rows) {
    $file = fopen($path, 'r');

    while (($row = fgetcsv($file)) !== false) {
        $rows->send($row);
    }

    $rows->close();
}, ['orders.csv', $rows]);

foreach ($rows as $row) {
    save_order($row);
}

$parse->await();

Zphp\select waits on several channels or futures and returns the first one ready:

$fetch = fn($url) => file_get_contents($url);

[$region, $response] = Zphp\select([
    'eu' => $pool->submit($fetch, ['https://eu.api.example.com/rates']),
    'us' => $pool->submit($fetch, ['https://us.api.example.com/rates']),
]);

$rates = json_decode($response->await(), true);

Zphp\Buffer moves binary data between threads without copying it, where ext-parallel copies every value.

Server

zphp serve runs an application without nginx or PHP-FPM. It handles TLS, HTTP/2, WebSockets, gzip, and static files itself, and its workers keep compiled bytecode between requests.

zphp serve public/index.php --workers 8 --tls-cert cert.pem --tls-key key.pem

Standalone executables

zphp build --compile app.php turns a script into an executable that runs on machines without PHP installed.

Extensions

Extensions use the C ABI in include/zphp_extension.h, and the same source builds as a shared library or compiles into zphp.

#include "zphp_extension.h"

static void hello_add(zphp_ctx *ctx) {
    zphp_return_int(ctx, zphp_get_int(zphp_arg(ctx, 0)) + zphp_get_int(zphp_arg(ctx, 1)));
}

static int module_init(zphp_module *m) {
    return zphp_register_function(m, "hello_add", hello_add);
}

static const zphp_extension hello = {
    .abi = ZPHP_EXTENSION_ABI, .name = "hello", .version = "1.0.0", .module_init = module_init,
};

ZPHP_EXTENSION(hello, &hello)

zig cc -shared -O2 -I include -o hello.so hello.c
zphp --extension=hello.so run app.php

tests/extensions/demo.c covers the rest of the API. zphp-bindings wraps it for Zig.

Tooling

Composer and PHPUnit run under zphp. It also ships its own tools:

Command
zphp install	Installs packages from Packagist using composer.json
zphp test	Built-in test runner
zphp fmt src/*.php	Opinionated formatter with no configuration, like gofmt

Installation

Download a binary from releases. The -musl Linux builds are a single static file that runs on any distribution, so copying it to a server is the whole install. To build from source, see installation.

Status

zphp is pre-1.0 and its APIs may still change. Run your application's test suite under zphp before deploying it.

Development

zphp's implementation is largely AI-written. Its direction, priorities, and releases are set by a human.