# Alert

Alert provides native and libevent event reactors for powering event-driven PHP applications
and servers. 

#### WHY?

Buffer and event-emmitter abstractions -- though user-friendly -- are unfortunately slow in userland.
Performant PHP servers cannot compete (in terms of speed) with the likes of Node.js where such features
are compiled. Alert avoids these features and provides *only* non-blocking IO, timer and signal
events to prevent OOP slowness in the overlying application. It's a stripped down, no-frills event
reactor that "just works."

#### FEATURES

Alert adds the following functionality to PHP's non-blocking IO space:

- Pausing/resuming *individual* event/signal/IO observers
- Assigning multiple watchers for individual streams

#### DEPENDENCIES

* PHP 5.4+
* (optional) [php-uv](https://github.com/chobie/php-uv) for libuv backends.
* (optional) [*PECL libevent*][libevent] for libevent backends. Windows libevent extension DLLs available [here][win-libevent]

#### INSTALLATION

###### Composer:

```bash
$ php composer.phar require rdlowrey/alert:0.9.*
```

###### Git:

```bash
$ git clone https://github.com/rdlowrey/alert.git
```
###### Manual Download:

Manually download from the [tagged release][tags] section.

[tags]: https://github.com/rdlowrey/alert/releases "Tagged Releases"
[libevent]: http://pecl.php.net/package/libevent "libevent"
[win-libevent]: http://windows.php.net/downloads/pecl/releases/ "Windows libevent DLLs"