How can PHP talk to a C# process running on mono?

Question

I am coding a web application in PHP and it has some performance intensive parts that I'd like to rewrite in a compiled language. I know that I could probably get this done more easily just by writing a C++ extension for PHP, but I'm a bit too spoiled by managed languages like C#, so I'd like to avoid C++ if possible.

If I wanted a PHP script to execute a function inside of a running C# (on mono) process, how could I do this? My first guess is to have PHP open a socket to the C# process, do the work, and close the socket, but I think that would add unnecessary overhead.

Are named pipes something that could solve this problem? If so, do they work on windows (my development machine), and how do I use them from C#?

If not, what other options do I have?

Answer 1

Have you considered using the PHP.NET compiler, Phalanger?

• Runs some very well-known PHP applications, including:
  • MediaWiki
  • PhpMyAdmin
  • PhpBB 2 & 3
• Works under Mono
• Performs substantially better than PHP 4.3.7 on Apache (PDF: see benchmark at end)
• Call .NET libraries (including your own) from PHP (PDF)
• Call PHP from other .NET languages
• PHP/CLR Language Extensions (PDF) make it a First Class .NET Language

Answer 2

There was a PECL extension for mono, but it's no longer maintained (last version was in 2003) ; so, this one is probably bad idea on the long term...

For something more recent, searching the php's documentation, if you want to work with .NET, you might be interested by COM and .Net (Windows) ; but it probably won't be OK for you, as you specify "mono", which probably means "non-windows" platform :-(

Every time I've heard about extending PHP with a compiled langage, it was using C (and, sometimes, C++) ; I've never about using C#/.NET/mono for that...

... So, you might not find what you are looking for :-(

Like you said, with multi-processes, and communication between those, you could do something... But not sure it's such a good idea...

(Compiling PHP to .NET seems possible, though -- but it's like the exact opposite of what you're asking ^^ )

Answer 3

Another option is to write a PHP module that embeds the Mono runtime in your application.

Here is the documentation on embedding the Mono runtime in your application, in this case, it would be PHP:

http://mono-project.com/Embedding_Mono