Introduction
This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension including the names of its functions and any other documentation surrounding this extension may change without notice in a future release of PHP. This extension should be used at your own risk.
This extension allows the loading of shared libraries (.DLL or .so), calling of C functions and accessing of C data structures in pure PHP, without having to have deep knowledge of the Zend extension API, and without having to learn a third “intermediate” language. The public API is implemented as a single class FFI with several static methods (some of them may be called dynamically), and overloaded object methods, which perform the actual interaction with C data.
FFI is dangerous, since it allows to interface with the system on a very low level. The FFI extension should only be used by developers having a working knowledge of C and the used C APIs. To minimize the risk, the FFI API usage may be restricted with the ffi.enable php.ini directive.
Note:
The FFI extension does not render the classic PHP extension API obsolete; it is merely provided for ad-hoc interfacing with C functions and data structures.
Currently, accessing FFI data structures is significantly (about 2 times) slower than accessing native PHP arrays and objects. Therefore, it makes no sense to use the FFI extension for speed; however, it may make sense to use it to reduce memory consumption.
English translation
You have asked to visit this site in English. For now, only the interface is translated, but not all the content yet.If you want to help me in translations, your contribution is welcome. All you need to do is register on the site, and send me a message asking me to add you to the group of translators, which will give you the opportunity to translate the pages you want. A link at the bottom of each translated page indicates that you are the translator, and has a link to your profile.
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Document created the 30/01/2003, last modified the 26/10/2018
Source of the printed document:https://www.gaudry.be/en/php-rf-intro.ffi.html
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References
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