There’s an easy way to embed C code into PHP by creating extensions. That’s the way external libraries such as GD or CURL are available in PHP. I’ll try to explain how it works and why it’s cool through sereval articles, this is the very first one.
The first thing to do is to get PHP sources, so as to be able to use some internal tools to make this task easier :
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| wget "http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.9.tar.bz2/from/fr.php.net/mirror"
tar -xf php-5.2.9.tar.bz2 |
Now we are ready to play, let’s have a look at a directory that might interest us: ext, it already contains several extensions that are bundled by default with PHP. If we look at the structure of one extension, for instance GD, here is what we can see:
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| $ cd php-5.2.9/ext/
$ ls -l gd/
total 252
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 16475 2007-07-03 19:25 config.m4
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 2136 2007-04-17 17:31 config.w32
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 118 2003-06-15 22:16 CREDITS
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 141580 2009-01-31 16:28 gd.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 4985 2005-01-09 22:05 gdcache.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 2866 2003-12-28 22:08 gdcache.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 4855 2008-12-31 12:17 gd_ctx.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 15665 2005-04-10 21:07 gd.dsp
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 23054 2005-01-09 22:05 gdttf.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 461 2000-02-26 04:20 gdttf.h
drwxr-xr-x 2 seb seb 4096 2009-02-25 16:39 libgd
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 6158 2008-12-31 12:17 php_gd.h
drwxr-xr-x 2 seb seb 4096 2009-02-25 16:39 tests |
The files config.m4 and config.w32 are used to compile the extension (config.m4 is for unix systems, config.w32 for windows). The folder tests contains some tests, these are performed during the `make test` operation, if you have time to waste, you can try it just for fun like this:
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| $ pwd
/tmp/php-5.2.9
$ ./configure
$ make test |
Let’s go back to the ext/gd directory. The most important files here are php_gd.h and gd.c, which tells PHP how to deal with C functions. Internal functions are present in the libgd folder, they can’t be called directly by PHP, but they can be called by functions from gd.c. This is an easy way to export an existing library to PHP, you only have to register some wrappers without changing your library code.
To make easier the building of extensions, PHP provides a tool to do the borring stuff: ext_skel, we can find it in the ext folder, here is what happens when executing it:
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| $ ./ext_skel
./ext_skel --extname=module [--proto=file] [--stubs=file] [--xml[=file]]
[--skel=dir] [--full-xml] [--no-help]
--extname=module module is the name of your extension
--proto=file file contains prototypes of functions to create
--stubs=file generate only function stubs in file
--xml generate xml documentation to be added to phpdoc-cvs
--skel=dir path to the skeleton directory
--full-xml generate xml documentation for a self-contained extension
(not yet implemented)
--no-help don't try to be nice and create comments in the code
and helper functions to test if the module compiled |
As we are just hippies, we’ll only create an extension containing one function that prints a pyramid (yeah that’s useless) :
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| $ ./ext_skel --extname=pyramid
Creating directory pyramid
Creating basic files: config.m4 config.w32 .cvsignore pyramid.c php_pyramid.h CREDITS EXPERIMENTAL tests/001.phpt pyramid.php [done].
To use your new extension, you will have to execute the following steps:
1. $ cd ..
2. $ vi ext/pyramid/config.m4
3. $ ./buildconf
4. $ ./configure --[with|enable]-pyramid
5. $ make
6. $ ./php -f ext/pyramid/pyramid.php
7. $ vi ext/pyramid/pyramid.c
8. $ make
Repeat steps 3-6 until you are satisfied with ext/pyramid/config.m4 and
step 6 confirms that your module is compiled into PHP. Then, start writing
code and repeat the last two steps as often as necessary.
$ cd pyramid
$ ls -l
total 32
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 2071 2009-03-21 18:55 config.m4
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 303 2009-03-21 18:55 config.w32
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 7 2009-03-21 18:55 CREDITS
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 0 2009-03-21 18:55 EXPERIMENTAL
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 2743 2009-03-21 18:55 php_pyramid.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 5264 2009-03-21 18:55 pyramid.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 seb seb 505 2009-03-21 18:55 pyramid.php
drwxr-xr-x 2 seb seb 4096 2009-03-21 18:55 tests |
ext_skel has prepared everything for us, we only have to edit pyramid.c and php_pyramid.h to be able to add our C code.
Let’s open php_pyramid.h, it already contains a list of defines, let’s add to it our function :
Now in pyramid.c, we need to register our function in the global array “zend_function_entry“, so that PHP can include it in its core:
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| zend_function_entry pyramid_functions[] = {
PHP_FE(confirm_pyramid_compiled, NULL) /* For testing, remove later. */
PHP_FE(pyramid, NULL)
{NULL, NULL, NULL} /* Must be the last line in pyramid_functions[] */
}; |
That’s it, last step, add our pyramid() function, but we must pay attention to some rules:
- to return a value, we have to use RETURN_XXXX where XXXX is the type of the value (BOOLEAN, STRING, …)
- the function must be registered through the define PHP_FUNCTION(x) where x is the name of the function
Here is a first version that doesn’t handle parameters (perhaps I’ll talk of them in another article) :
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| #include <stdio.h>
PHP_FUNCTION(pyramid)
{
int i;
int j;
int result;
int size;
size = 10;
result = 0;
for (i = 1; i <= size; i++)
{
for (j = size; j > i; j--)
result += printf(" ");
for (j = 1; j < (i * 2); j++)
result += printf("+");
if (result)
result += printf("\n");
}
RETURN_LONG(result);
} |
It simply outputs a pyramid according to a size, and returns the character’s number printed. Now we have to compile it with PHP, for that we need to re-build the configure script so as to have the option –enable-pyramid:
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| $ pwd
/tmp/php-5.2.9
$ ./buildconf --force
$ ./configure --prefix=/tmp/php-devel --enable-pyramid |
Finally, we can build it :
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| $ make
$ make install |
Now we have a PHP version with our extension, let’s test it :
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| $ pwd
/tmp/php-devel/bin
$ cat test.php
<?php
var_dump(pyramid());
?>
$ ./php test.php
+
+++
+++++
+++++++
+++++++++
+++++++++++
+++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++
int(145) |
Yaw it works! I’ll talk in another article what’s so cool with a c-pyramid!
aimxhaisse Developpement Web, Programmation C, php bricolage, C, extension, php