In early 2021, Symfony created a "Runtime component". This component may look complex, weird, and full of hacks but it is a game-changer for how we run PHP applications.
With the Runtime component, we can look at each application as a "black box". A box
that has no connection to globals like $_SERVER
or $_GET
. To run the application
you need (you guessed it) a Runtime
. It is a class that looks at the black box
to figure out what input it requires and handles the output.
Consider this small application that returns a UUID.
namespace Acme;
class Application
{
public function run() {
return Uuid::uuid4()->toString();
}
}
To use this application with the Runtime component we need our front-controller to return a callable that will create the application.
// index.php
return function() {
return new Acme\Application();
}
If you want to use this application in a CLI environment, you need a
Runtime
that knows how to run an Acme\Application
object and print the output on
CLI. If you want to use it with Nginx/PHP-FPM then you need another Runtime
that converts the application's output to an HTTP response.
Since your application is not connected to the global state, it is very portable.
It is easy to create a Runtime
to run the application with Bref, Swoole or
ReactPHP without making any changes to the application itself.
Since most modern PHP applications are based on Symfony's HttpKernel, PSR-7 or PSR-15 we don't need too many different runtimes. This organization holds many PHP packages with runtimes for the most popular environments. It is not "the source of all runtimes", but rather a temporary place where runtimes can live before they move into Bref/Swoole/RoadRunner etc.
All runtimes have hard dependencies to make installation easier. Everything should "just work".
Read more at the Symfony documentation.
Run your application on AWS Lambda with Bref.
Run your application on Google Cloud.
Event-driven, non-blocking I/O with ReactPHP.
Spin up multiple PHP processes with Golang using RoadRunner.
Build high-performance, scalable, concurrent HTTP services with Swoole.
Run your Symfony application with the FrankenPHP app server.
These runtimes are for PHP-FPM and the more traditional web servers one might use for local development.
A runtime for Laravel and Artisan.
Use the popular PSR architecture.
The runtime for Symfony is included in the runtime component.
On Symfony < 5.4 session data will not be properly stored when using a "non-traditional"
webserver like Bref, Google, ReactPHP, RoadRunner, or Swoole. This problem (or missing
feature) has been added in Symfony 5.4 and 6.0. You need to use symfony/http-kernel >= 5.4
for sessions to work properly.
Contributions are always welcomed. Send your PR or open an issue here: https://github.com/php-runtime/runtime