I forgot to put some final note into my last message.
PHP can be good for a lot of things, but not really for other. Wonder
when requirements grow long in some ways you could not ever expect in a
project like your's: A simple example: need 5 concurrent connections in
your "hacked" multi-process server, that could be easily done in PHP,
and, you could probably live with it in some circumstances.
But do you wonder what could happen with your system if tomorrow you
need to handle, let's say, 500 or 1000 concurrent connections? yeah, you
will tell me that your software was not designed for that, or because
PHP has no threading...
Having that in mind, you must think seriously about the future of your
application, because switching today can save you a lot of time waste
tomorrow, like happened to me with one project.
PHP was great for lots of projects I did, but if in the past I could
only realize a bit of what I should have to do later, I definitely had
switched immediatly before starting that developement, as I have done
anyway later... the requirements for my applications grown more and gone
far beyond what I ever expected... :-) but who knows that in advance?
I continue using PHP for a lot of tasks, tasks I know in the future
won't requiere me to climb a mountain, being over its limits... because
it was not the right tool to use for the job.
Hope my comments can help you in your thoughts of standarizing on a
single codebase and language... :-)
Gonzalo
Gonzalo Monzón escribió:
D. Dante Lorenso escribió:
Gonzalo Monzón wrote:
Use Python, it is the way to go if you're willing to use mt :-)
I've already written the multi-threaded server using Java. I want to
do this in PHP, however, because the PHP "threads" can re-use PHP
classes I've already written and hence standardize on a single
codebase and language. Many other languages have threads (Java, C#,
Python, Ruby, etc) ... which is why I'm so amazed PHP does not even
list Threads as a priority. You simply can't be an enterprise
language without these basic features. Of course, don't get me
started on namespaces too ;-)
No, choosing a different language has been considered and I'd rather
continue with my hacked multi-process PHP server solution before I am
ready to change to a different language.
Dante
Sorry, but no PHP "threads" can re-use any PHP classes, as threads are
not implemented yet... maybe until PHP 8 :-)
Threading isn't a trivial task, and if you MUST use it (I don't think
so) you should develop some extension or take other approaches like
embedding, and code all your threading needs apart from PHP, in C. But
be careful interacting from that code to PHP. Or, perhaps switch to
another language, if you can't cope with that.
I've been developing desktop applications with PHP-GTK since 2002, far
beyond the web script context, and in the more complex projects I did,
was a must to implement multi-process and IPC communication due to the
lack of threading in PHP, as to deal with some issues like multiple
tcp clients, multiple tcp server with a proxy to the application data,
webservices, handling UI, and a lot more stuff, while doing "realtime"
(the more realtime I was able of) processing of all incoming and
outgoing data, for more than 24 hours long running time. Yes, I was
able to be successful with such a developement after a lot of pain,
but it is not likely the most common usage for PHP. I finally had to
implement several parts in C, embedding PHP, and really, I was not
happy of to cope with that, but I did not have the time to switch to
another language as I had to re-use a lot of existing code that worked
smooth with a multi-process approach, but without the need of so long
running time, so many tcp clients, and so many data... I had to
implement data containers in using C structures, as handling all that
data from PHP taken more than 500Mb of RAM in no more than 8 hours of
processing, interprocess syncronization mechanisms, and a lot more stuff.
In my case, multi threading was a real need I had to workaround. I
think this is a real life example of PHP being expanded far beyond web
paradigms or simple shell scripts, without any multi-threading
support. But PHP is not thought in any case to be used for such
applications... (I'm talking about desktop applications, not web
script applications), with or without multithreading.
If you'd like to use mt in your applications or web scripts, better
switch to some other language, or search for alternative ways of
implementation as you did with a multi-process approach.
PHP its a great language, but it isn't the right tool for anything.
Gonzalo.
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