ext-php-rs/README.md

# ext-php-rs

[<img align="right" src="https://discord.com/api/guilds/115233111977099271/widget.png?style=banner2">](https://discord.gg/dphp)

Bindings and abstractions for the Zend API to build PHP extensions natively in Rust.

## Example

Export a simple function `function hello_world(string $name): string` to PHP:

```rs
use ext_php_rs::prelude::*;

#[php_function]
pub fn hello_world(name: String) -> String {
    format!("Hello, {}!", name)
}

// Required to register the extension with PHP.
#[php_module]
pub fn module(module: ModuleBuilder) -> ModuleBuilder {
    module
}
```

Calling the function from PHP:

```php
var_dump(hello_world("David")); // string(13) "Hello, David!"
```

## Features

- **Easy to use:** The built-in macros can abstract away the need to interact with the Zend API, such as Rust-type function parameter abstracting away interacting with Zend values.
- **Lightweight:** You don't have to use the built-in helper macros. It's possible to write your own glue code around your own functions.
- **Extensible:** Implement `IntoZval` and `FromZval` for your own custom types, allowing the type to be used as function parameters and return types.

## Goals

Our main goal is to **make extension development easier.**

- Writing extensions in C can be tedious, and with the Zend APIs limited documentation can be intimidating.
- Rust's modern language features and feature-full standard library are big improvements on C.
- Abstracting away the raw Zend APIs allows extensions to be developed faster and with more confidence.
- Abstractions also allow us to support future (and potentially past) versions of PHP without significant changes to extension code.

## Documentation

The project is documented in-line, so viewing the `cargo` documentation is the best resource at the moment.

We are currently unable to deploy our documentation to `docs.rs` due to the crate requiring PHP 8.0, which is unavailable in the default Ubuntu repositories.
Documentation can be viewed [here](https://davidcole1340.github.io/ext-php-rs/). It is generated from the latest `master` branch. Documentation will be moved to `docs.rs` when Ubuntu updates its repositories to PHP 8.0.

## Requirements

- PHP 8.0 or later
     - No support is planned for lower versions.
- Linux or Darwin-based OS
- Rust - no idea which version
- Clang 3.9 or greater

See the following links for the dependency crate requirements:

- [`cc`](https://github.com/alexcrichton/cc-rs#compile-time-requirements)
- [`bindgen`](https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-bindgen/requirements.html)


## Usage

This project only works for PHP >= 8.0 (for now). Due to the fact that the PHP extension system relies heavily on C macros (which cannot be exported to Rust easily), structs have to be hard coded in.

Check out one of the example projects:

- [ext-skel](example/skel) - Testbed for testing the library. Check out previous commits as well to see what else is possible.
- [anonaddy-sequoia](https://gitlab.com/willbrowning/anonaddy-sequoia) - Sequoia encryption PHP extension.
- [opus-php](https://github.com/davidcole1340/opus-php/tree/rewrite_rs) - Work-in-progress extension to use the Opus library in PHP.

## Contributions

Contributions are very much welcome. I am a novice Rust developer and any suggestions are wanted and welcome. Feel free to file issues and PRs through Github.

Contributions welcome include:

- Documentation expansion (examples in particular!)
- Safety reviews (especially if you have experience with Rust and the Zend API).
- Bug fixes and features.
- Feature requests.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

## Resources

- [PHP Internals Book](https://www.phpinternalsbook.com/)

## License

Licensed under either of

 * Apache License, Version 2.0
   ([LICENSE_APACHE](LICENSE_APACHE) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
 * MIT license
   ([LICENSE_MIT](LICENSE_MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.