Abstract

So you’ve heard that PHP supports extensions. But what are they exactly, what can you do with them, and what can’t you do with them? And mostly, why would you or would you not want to spend time writing them?
This session will introduce you into what PHP extensions are, and what they can do for you. It will cover cases of when it makes sense to write extensions and which things you need to think of when deciding whether you want to put the effort into writing an extension.
The talk then proceeds with a small introduction to the request cycle and PHP’s memory management. It mentions which parts of PHP you could override and which parts you can hook into. It will also cover things that you can not do with extensions.