You're reading from PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks and Best Practices A practical guide to PHP 8 features, usage changes, and advanced programming techniques

Product type Paperback

Published in Aug 2021

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781801071871

Length 528 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

PHP

Tools

phpList

Concepts

Programming Language

Author (1):

Doug Bierer

View More author details

Table of Contents (17) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: PHP 8 Tips

2. Chapter 1: Introducing New PHP 8 OOP Features FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Learning about PHP 8's Functional Additions

4. Chapter 3: Taking Advantage of Error-Handling Enhancements

5. Chapter 4: Making Direct C-Language Calls

6. Section 2: PHP 8 Tricks

7. Chapter 5: Discovering Potential OOP Backward-Compatibility Breaks

8. Chapter 6: Understanding PHP 8 Functional Differences

9. Chapter 7: Avoiding Traps When Using PHP 8 Extensions

10. Chapter 8: Learning about PHP 8's Deprecated or Removed Functionality

11. Section 3: PHP 8 Best Practices

12. Chapter 9: Mastering PHP 8 Best Practices

13. Chapter 10: Improving Performance

14. Chapter 11: Migrating Existing PHP Apps to PHP 8

15. Chapter 12: Creating PHP 8 Applications Using Asynchronous Programming

16. Other Books You May Enjoy

Understanding FFI

The main purpose of a FFI is to allow any given programming language the ability to incorporate code and function calls from external libraries written in other languages. An early example of this was the ability of 1980s microcomputers to incorporate assembler language into otherwise sluggish Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) programming language scripts using the PEEK and POKE commands. Unlike many other languages, PHP did not have this capability prior to PHP 7.4, although it had been under discussion since 2004.

In order to gain a full understanding of FFI in PHP 8, it's necessary to digress and have a look at why it took so long for FFI to be fully adopted into the PHP language. It's also necessary to take a quick look at PHP extensions in general, and the ability to work with C-language code. We first examine the relationship between PHP and the C language.