Jan Benda Martin Maly Tomas Matousek Ladislav Prosek Pavel Novak Vaclav Novak Tomas Matousek Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in Prague Czech Republic

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Outline Introduction to the Phalanger System main features and goals Why PHP on.NET Framework? Performance benchmarks Interesting Issues inclusions, local variables optimization, multi-version types/functions accessing.NET objects, adding fields on.NET objects at run-time using PHP native libraries Future Work: Phalanger 2.0 PHP/CLR – extending PHP to the first-class.NET language Support for Mono Platform

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Phalanger Extends the family of.NET languages with PHP versions 4, 5, and 6 introduces language extensions for using.NET types (PHP/CLR) Makes it possible to run existing PHP applications on ASP.NET web server Significant performance improvement Higher reliability of the web server Better configurability More errors revealed by the compilation Source-free application deployment Brings virtually all PHP libraries to.NET Framework migration from PHP interpreter is simple in practice without additional costs Enriches both worlds PHP applications with the functionality of the.NET platform.NET applications with a possibility to use a popular dynamic language Integrates PHP with Visual Studio.NET

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 PHP Sample include "a.php"; class C extends D implements I, J { public function m($a, $b = 1, $c = array(3,2,1)) { $f = "sort"; $f($c); $x = "b"; if ($$x) { function f() { echo "version 1"; } } else { function f() { echo "version 2"; } } f(); eval('$a++;'); } private $d; function __get($field_name) { return $d->$field_name; } function __set($field_name, $value) { $d->$field_name = $value; } }

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Micro-benchmarks each operation performed 10M times in a loop; machine: Pentium M Dothan 1.8GHz/2MB cache the lesser the better

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 phpBB Benchmark Results (Apache ) requests per second MSDE 2000 SP3 MySQL Phalanger 1.0 PHP + Zend Optimizer PHP the greater the better

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Major Issues missing specification “correctness” criteria: existing applications should work well without modifications inclusions standard PHP mode  inclusions similar to C language; the included file needn’t to be known at compile-time pure mode (since Phalanger 2.0)  C# like project – unconditional declarations visible in all files comprising the project multi-version and compile-time unknown types/functions classes and functions can be declared conditionally in multiple versions classes and functions can be generated at run-time class can extend/implement compile-time unknown class/interface local variables optimization creating a hash table for each call is expensive and unnecessary compile-time known variables can be stored in CLR locals in majority cases

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Using PHP Native Extensions a necessity for a seamless migration from PHP interpreter PHP Many functions and classes implemented in PHP extensions  php_imap.dll, php_pdf.dll, php_sockets.dll, php_gtk.dll, … PHP interpreter exposes so called Zend API to extensions (php4ts.dll) Phalanger Makes the functionality in PHP extensions available for any.NET app.  managed wrappers  encapsulates and shields out native implementation  Extension Manager  emulates the PHP interpreter environment (Zend API)  within the application process using the extension or  in a separate process, isolating untrustworthy extensions Extension Wrapper C++/CLI php4ts.dll Mixed Code php_imap.dll php_pdf.dll … Zend API Application (PHP, C#, …) optional process boundary bridged by.NET Remoting via Shared Memory Channel Native Code Managed Code Extension Manager

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Managed Wrappers Assemblies generated automatically from native extensions and optional type information in XML format php_sockets.xml... PHP_FUNCTION(socket_write) { zend_parse_parameters(...); ZEND_FETCH_RESOURCE(...); //... RETURN_LONG(...); }... php_sockets.dll.method public hidebysig static int32 socket_write( class [PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.PhpResource socket, string buf, int32 length) cil managed {.custom instance void PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.ImplementsFunctionAttribute... //... call object [PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.Externals::InvokeFunction(...) //... ret }.method public hidebysig static int32 socket_write( class [PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.PhpResource socket, string buf) cil managed {.custom instance void PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.ImplementsFunctionAttribute... //... call object [PhpNetCore]PHP.Core.Externals::InvokeFunction(...) //... ret } php_sockets.mng.dll

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Summary & Future Work Phalanger 1.0 goal achieved: to make existing application working under.NET much better performance in practice final version available for download Phalanger 2.0, PHP/CLR Make PHP a first-class language for.NET  extensions to the language enabling PHP programs to work directly with.NET types, methods, delegates, events, generics, …  extending.NET classes, overload resolution, run-time fields addition, …  multi-threading  support for Language Integrated Query (LINQ)  minimize necessary language modifications  keep the dynamic nature of the language  e.g. run-time specified generic type arguments, etc. ASP.NET Controls in PHP etc.

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Related Work Dynamic languages on.NET IronPython  Python is a bit more dynamic  e.g. replacing methods at run-time  less optimizations possible  PyStone benchmark  overall improvement by factor 1.84  micro-benchmark results range from 10x faster to 10x slower Ruby, Perl, JScript, … PHP compilers Resin Quercus  PHP to Java translation, compilation to JVM byte-code Roadsend Compiler  PHP to C translation, compilation to native code

Matousek,.NET Technologies, 5/30/2006 Q & A