How to use Fibers to achieve concurrency in PHP8.0

With the continuous development of modern Internet technology, the number of website visits is increasing, which also puts forward higher requirements for the concurrent processing capabilities of the server. How to improve the concurrent processing capabilities of the server is a problem that every developer needs to face. In this context, PHP8.0 introduces the new feature of Fibers, allowing PHP developers to master a new way of concurrency processing.

What are Fibers?

First of all, we need to understand what Fibers are. Fibers are lightweight threads that efficiently support asynchronous processing of PHP code. Traditional PHP code is single-threaded and cannot truly implement asynchronous operations. It often needs to wait for the completion of I/O operations, resulting in unnecessary blocking. The emergence of Fibers solves this problem, allowing PHP code to support concurrent processing like other languages ​​such as Node.js.

Using Fibers to achieve concurrency

Let’s talk about how to use Fibers to achieve concurrency.

1. Install Swoole extension

In PHP8.0, Fibers is implemented based on Swoole extension, so you need to install the Swoole extension first. It can be installed through PECL:

pecl install swoole 

2. Creating Fiber objects

Using Fibers to achieve concurrency requires creating Fiber objects. Creating Fiber objects can be achieved by creating anonymous functions or class methods. For example:

$fiber = new SwooleFiber(function() {
  // 这里是并发要执行的代码
});

或

class MyClass {
  public function onReceive($server, $fd, $reactor_id, $data) {
    // 这里是并发要执行的代码
  }
}
$fiber = new SwooleFiber([$myClass, 'onReceive']);

3. Start Fiber

After creating the Fiber object, you need to start Fiber. To start Fiber, you can use the start method or the suspend method. Use the start method to start Fiber immediately and execute the code defined in Fiber. For example:

$fiber->start();

and the suspend method can suspend the execution of Fiber and wait for the next execution. For example:

$fiber->suspend();

4. Switch Fiber

In Fiber, use the swoole_fiber_switch function to switch the execution of Fiber. For example:

function foo() {
  echo 'foo ';
  yield;
  echo 'bar ';
  yield;
  echo 'baz';
}
$fiber1 = new SwooleFiber($foo);
$fiber2 = new SwooleFiber($foo);
$fiber1->start();
$fiber2->start();
while ($fiber1->getStatus() !== SwooleFiber::STATUS_DEAD || $fiber2->getStatus() !== SwooleFiber::STATUS_DEAD) {
  if ($fiber1->getStatus() !== SwooleFiber::STATUS_DEAD) {
    swoole_fiber_switch($fiber1);
  }
  if ($fiber2->getStatus() !== SwooleFiber::STATUS_DEAD) {
    swoole_fiber_switch($fiber2);
  }
}

In the above example, we created two Fiber objects and let them execute alternately, outputting foobarbaz.

5. Using coroutine API

In addition to manually switching Fiber, the Swoole extension also provides some coroutine APIs for convenient concurrent processing. For example, use the Co::create method to create a coroutine object, and use Co::parallel to allow multiple coroutines to execute in parallel. For example:

$urls = [
  'http://example.com/foo',
  'http://example.com/bar',
  'http://example.com/baz',
];
$coros = [];
foreach ($urls as $url) {
  $coros[] = Co::create(function() use ($url) {
    $html = file_get_contents($url);
    return strlen($html);
  });
}
$results = Co::parallel($coros);

In the above example, we created three coroutine objects, accessed three URLs respectively, and finally used the Co::parallel method to parallelize these three coroutines. Execute, get the results and return.

Summary

Fibers is a new feature introduced in PHP8.0, which gives full play to Swoole's extended concurrency processing capabilities. Using Fibers can easily implement asynchronous processing of PHP code and improve the concurrent processing capabilities of the server. Of course, Fibers also need to be used with caution and attention should be paid to avoiding problems such as resource competition. I hope that the introduction in this article can help PHP developers understand Fibers better and perform better concurrency processing.

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