This directory contains the Protocol Buffers runtime implementation via both a pure PHP package and a native c extension. The pure PHP package is intended to provide usability to wider range of PHP platforms, while the c extension is intended to provide higher performance. Both implementations provide the same runtime APIs and share the same generated code. Users don’t need to re-generate code for the same proto definition when they want to switch the implementation later.
Both implementations make use of generated PHP code that defines message and enum types in PHP. We strongly recommend using protoc's PHP generation support with .proto files. The build process in this directory only installs the extension/package; you need to install protoc as well to have PHP code generation functionality.
For information on supported language versions and how the support levels for PHP versions will change over time, see Supported PHP versions.
To install the c extension, the following tools are needed:
- libtool
- make
- gcc
- pear
- pecl
On Ubuntu, you can install them with:
sudo apt-get install -y php-pear php-dev libtool make gcc
On other platforms, please use the corresponding package managing tool to install them before proceeding.
To build the c extension, run the following command:
cd ext/google/protobuf
pear package
sudo pecl install protobuf-{VERSION}.tgz
When we release a version of Protocol Buffers, we will upload the extension to PECL. To use this pre-packaged extension, simply install it as you would any other extension:
sudo pecl install protobuf-{VERSION}
Simply add "google/protobuf" to the 'require' section of composer.json in your project.
To use the pure PHP implementation, you need to install bcmath.
Once the extension or package is installed, if you wish to generate PHP code
from a .proto
file, you will also want to install the Protocol Buffers
compiler (protoc), as described in this repository's main README
file. The
version of protoc
included in the latest release supports the --php_out
option to generate PHP code:
protoc --php_out=out_dir test.proto
For generated code: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/php-generated
- Missing native support for well known types.
- Missing support for proto2.
- No API provided for clear/copy messages.
- No API provided for encoding/decoding with stream.
- Map fields may not be garbage-collected if there is cycle reference.
- No debug information for messages in c extension.
- HHVM not tested.
- C extension not tested on windows, mac, php 7.0.
- Message name cannot be Empty.
# Install Dependencies (Linux)
apt-get install bazel composer php-dev
# Download protobuf
git clone https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf.git
cd protobuf
# Build protoc
bazel build :protoc
# Test native php
cd php
composer install
composer test
After you have finished testing the native php, you can test the c extension:
cd tests
./test.sh 5.6 # The php runtime version.
# We provide 5.5, 5.5-zts, 5.6, 5.6-zts, 7.0, 7.0-zts, 7.1, 7.1-zts, 7.2, 7.2-zts, 7.3 and 7.3-zts
# ls /usr/local for more details
If you want to use gdb to debug the c extension, you can do:
./gdb_test.sh