Customer Reviews

Building Custom PHP Extensions

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book will save you a lot of time if you have to implement
a serious PHP extension for the first time. It's definitely
worth it -- not so much because the book is so great (it is
very good overall) -- but more because there isn't any other
resource quite like it out there.

Having said that, it could have had a more discussion
of the overal environment of PHP extension programming, including:

- how/when zvals are garbage collected (how can you verify
you're not creating memory leaks?)
- when zvals are created and consumed and who "owns" them
as they are passed around between functions
- threading issues: what are you allowed to do/not do wrt.
threading?
- Many PHP macros are written dangerously, e.g. they hardly
ever use constructs like "do {..} while (0)" or extra parens.

Obviously if you get these issues wrong you're likely to
have some trouble - and hard to debug trouble at that.

In other words, the first chapter is "First PHP extension"
but an overall introductory chapter about the funny little
world that PHP extensions live in before that would have
been nice. But overall a great book and glad to have found it.

This is truly an awesome guide to writing your own PHP extensions. I would like to add, though, that the book only covers PHP4 - not PHP5.

If you ever want or have to build your own PHP extension, there's only one serious recommendation: read this book!
It's well written, the examples are easy to use and it's just fun working with it. Building your own extension has never been that easy.
This book saved me weeks of research in bad commented source codes. Thanks!

This is a great in-depth book for extending PHP. Clear concise examples throughout for customization and PHP extensions. A must have in any advanced programers library.