What can PHP Foreign Function Interface do for you?

Next PHP version (7.4) will bring a lot of new exciting features. One of them is PHP Foreign Function Interface extension built directly into the core. But what problems exactly this extension is trying to solve? Does this mean that we no more need to write PHP extension if we want to use an existing library?

In this talk, we will together discover way how to easily call almost any C library directly from PHP. Why we want to do this. How to overcome common pitfalls and most importantly when to use approach and when not.

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Gert de Pagter at 22:25 on 7 Jun 2019 (via Web2 LIVE)

I learned how to interact with FFI, will be great to use this in the future

Dion Snoeijen at 17:14 on 8 Jun 2019 (via Web2 LIVE)

Not sure if I'm ever going to use it. But still very interesting.

Bert Van de Casteele at 13:25 on 9 Jun 2019 (via Web2 LIVE)

THE GOOD :

Learning new stuff is always entertaining.
A lot of code examples is always a plus.
It was well presented in English, which is not always so obvious for non native English speakers.

THE LESS GOOD :

I felt a bit overwhelmed by the use of C code, which is not a well-known language to me (but again, this could be my personal issue)
I did not see a lot of use cases for this at the moment : agreed, you can use foreign functions to PHP in PHP itself this way, but then again, with the current eco system solutions can be found quite easily.
The performance is indeed a detriment to wide spread adoptions, which is a turn off to me.
I would have like to see, if possible of course, examples with FFI and another language, to demonstrate its broader capabilities.

Overall, a good talk, and quite informative, but personally, I do not see a lot of gain at the moment. Definitely will keep an eye on FFI though, it seems interesting enough :)