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ReactPHP

ReactPHP is a low-level library for event-driven programming. It provides an event loop, streams, promises, and other primitives for building asynchronous, non-blocking applications.

ReactPHP is built around four core components:

  • EventLoop: the core of ReactPHP, handling scheduling and dispatching of callbacks for I/O events, timers, and stream events
  • Streams: abstracted stream interfaces, ReadableStreamInterface, WritableStreamInterface, etc. for non-blocking I/O operations
  • Promises: a deferred/promise implementation for handling asynchronous results
  • Socket: a high-level socket server and client implementation

ReactPHP is widely used for building:

  • HTTP servers and clients
  • WebSocket servers
  • Database clients, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, etc.
  • TCP/UDP servers
  • File watchers and process managers

It is the foundation for many production-grade PHP applications requiring high concurrency, such as chat servers, real-time APIs, and IoT gateways. ReactPHP 1.x requires PHP 7.1+, and the upcoming 2.0 version will leverage Fibers for simpler coroutine-like syntax.

<?php

    require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

    $http = new React\Http\Server(function (Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface $request) {
        return React\Http\Message\Response::plaintext('Hello World!\n');
    });

    $socket = new React\Socket\SocketServer('127.0.0.1:8080');
    $http->listen($socket);

    echo "Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8080\n";

?>

Documentation

See Also