Is it possible to build a multi-threaded application with PHP ?

I would appreciate for any links regarding this issue....


thank you

Php itself doesn't support threading although you can run php in a threaded web server environment. Apache 2 supports multithreaded mode but the PHP Group doesn't recommend running PHP on Apache 2 in multithreaded mode.

You can do multi-process and use shared memory to pass data between processes. Here's an example of spawning a separate process:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/PHP/Q_20977409.html

You could extend this to fork multiple child processes.

Perhaps you could share the general sort of application you are looking to build; that might spark some useful discussion on threading, or not to threading, that is the question.

Just an extension o what Jag said...

You can fake it.

I'd suggest using Fast-cgi with Lighttpd since Apache is unstable in multi-threaded mode.

Then you could maintain cross-thread communication through ram. PHP has a shared memory library, and there's always APC or Eacceleroator which lets you access memory as well as cache script opcode automatically.

Perhaps you could share the general sort of application you are looking to build; that might spark some useful discussion on threading, or not to threading, that is the question.

well, at the moment I don't have any specific project to build with multi-threaded support, I would just like to know is it possible in PHP since I was doing some multi-threading in ASP.NET, but that's something completely different....


thanks to all, and I'll digg some info now that you said what to "look" for - Apache, Lighttpd......

PHP's thread support is weak, maybe python is a better choice if you want to go with multi-thread.

If you don't have a specific requirement, I would ignore it. Even in Python, the use of threading isn't all that common although some projects use it extensively (see twisted).

Many web application servers intentionally use a forking model and are able to pump out high transaction rates. Avoiding threading greatly simplifies your debugging chores, as you probably know.