ext-php-rs/guide/src/introduction.md

Introduction

ext-php-rs is a Rust library containing bindings and abstractions for the PHP extension API, which allows users to build extensions natively in Rust.

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.

Versioning

ext-php-rs follows semantic versioning, however, no backwards compatibility is guaranteed while we are at major version 0, which is for the foreseeable future. It's recommended to lock the version at the patch level.

Documentation

• This guide!
• Rust docs