An Embeddable PHP5 Engine

About The PH7 Engine

PH7 is a in-process software library that implements a highly-efficient embeddable bytecode compiler and a virtual machine for the PHP programming language. In other words, PH7 is a PHP engine which allow the host application to compile and execute PHP scripts in-process. PH7 is to PHP what SQLite is to SQL.

PH7 implements most of the constructs introduced by the PHP 5.3 release such as heredoc, nowdoc, gotos, classes, anonymous functions, closures and so on and introduces very powerful extensions to the PHP programming language such as:

Function & Method Overloading.
Full Type Hinting.
Introducing comma expressions.
Introducing the eq and ne operators for strict string comparison.
Improved operators precedences.
Powerful OO subsystem.
Function arguments can take any complex expressions as their default values.
64-bit integer arithmetic for all platforms.
Native UTF-8 support.
PH7 is 100% hand-coded, written in ANSI C, compile and run unmodified in any platform including restricted embedded devices with a C compiler.
Amalgamation: All C source code for PH7 are combined into a single source file.
Built with more 470 function including an XML parser (with namespace support), INI processor, CSV reader/writer, UTF-8 encoder/decoder, zip archive extractor, JSON encoder/decoder, random number/strings generator, native and efficient File IO for Windows and UNIX systems and many more without the need of any external library to link with.
PH7 is an Open-Source product.

Current Public Release: 2.1.4

PH7 is the ideal library for enhancing your application (i.e: SCM, Server, CMS, Control panel, Search engine, etc.) or device (i.e: router, set-top box, etc.) with dynamic web interfaces, with all benefits and power of the PHP(5) programming language without the overhead uncured by the insecure CGI mechanism and it's high costs such as process creation (fork(), exec()) since PH7 run in-process.

As an embedded interpreter, it allows multiple interpreter states to coexist in the same program, without any interference between them. Programmatically, foreign functions in C can be added and values can be defined in the PHP environment. Being a quite small program, it is easy to comprehend, get to grips with, and use.

PH7 is 100% hand-coded, written in ANSI C, compiles unmodified and should run in any platform including restricted embedded device with a C compiler.

PH7 is extensively tested on Windows and UNIX systems especially Linux, FreeBSD, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X.

PH7 is a compact library. With all features enabled, the library size can be less than 600KiB, depending on compiler optimization settings. (Some compiler optimizations such as aggressive function inlining and loop unrolling can cause the object code to be much larger.) If optional features are omitted, the size of the PH7 library can be reduced below 220KiB. PH7 can also be made to run in very little heap (2MB), making PH7 a popular PHP engine choice on memory constrained gadgets such as cellphones, tablets, numeric devices and so on.

PH7 is an open-source, dual-licensed product available free of charge for open-source projects under the term of the Symisc Public License (SPL) which is a GPL compatible license and is equivalent to the more popular Sleepycat license (An OSI approved license). See the licensing page for additional information.

Useful links to start with

Download		Get a copy of the last public release of the PH7 engine, start embedding and enjoy programming with.
Distinctive Features		This document enumerates and describes some of the features and the powerfull extensions introduced by the PH7 engine.
Frequently Asked Questions		FAQ: The title of the document says all...
Copyright/Licensing		PH7 is dual-licensed and is available free of charge for open source projects. Find more on the licensing situation there.
Online Community Support		Need some help, join the PH7 online community.

PH7 Programming Interfaces

Documentation describing the APIs used to program PH7. Note that PH7 is very easy to learn, even for new programmer. Here is some useful links to start with:

PH7 In 5 Minutes Or Less		Gives a high-level overview on the how to embed the PH7 engine in a host application.
An Introduction To The PH7 C/C++ Interface		Gives an overview and roadmap to the C/C++ interface to PH7.
C/C++ API Reference Guide		This document describes each API function in details.
Foreign Function Implementation		Is a how-to guide on how to install C functions and invoke them from your PHP script.
Constant Expansion Mechanism		Is a how-to guide on how to install foreign constants and expand their values from your PHP script.

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