Extending PHP

Zero application developers can choose to build extensions to PHP that provide access to functionality that was built using Java. This guide summarizes the steps for creating such an extension to the platform. For the purpose of this guide, it is assumed that the developer uses the Eclipse development environment to build the extension.

The PHP extension interface is designed to allow the features implemented in Java to appear to the PHP programmer as as though they are part of the base PHP support. The interface is not designed to give access to arbitrary Java Classes from PHP without modification to those classes (for accessing arbitrary Java Classes see the PHP/Java Bridge).

Tutorials

• Creating a simple PHP extension
• Passing and returning by reference
• Sending output to the browser
• Accessing variables in the runtime
• Configuring an extension
• Parsing function arguments
• Raising runtime errors
• Calling functions in the runtime
• Accessing PHP arrays in an extension
• Using PHP resources in an extension
• Registering for object callbacks
• Debugging a PHP extension in eclipse

Reference information

• Conversion of types between PHP and Java
• Overview of PHP Runtime Services
• Source code for the big decimal extension
• API Documentation for Extending PHP (JavaDoc)