Introducing FrankenPHP gRPC

Theses slides were presented during the opening keynote of the API Platform Conference. They unveil an experimental gRPC extension for the FrankenPHP application server, .

The extension enables developers to build high-performance gRPC servers using PHP, leveraging the power of Go's native gRPC library.

Transcript

1. SEPTEMBER 18 -19, 2025 - LILLE, FRANCE & ONLINE Opening Keynote: Enhance Your API Platform APIs With Go Thanks to FrankenPHP
2. ✔ API Platform creator ✔ FrankenPHP and Mercure creator ✔ PHP and Symfony maintainer ✔ Founder at Les-Tilleuls.coop Kévin Dunglas dunglas.dev
3. Web and cloud experts https:/ /github.com/sponsors/api-platform
5. 10 Years of API Platform!
7. 10 Years of Community
8. 10 Years of Community ✔ 14k stargazers on GitHub ✔ 921 code and docs contributors ✔ 5.7k people on Slack ✔ Symfony and Laravel support ✔ Gave rise to Mercure, FrankenPHP, and many Symfony components
9. Today Is Also Nils Birthday 🎂
10. The Biggest API Platform Conference Ever ✔ Sold out: we are 400 in Lille ✔ 200+ people online from all over the world ✔ For the 1st time: 3 tracks! ✔ 35 incredible speakers ✔ Stunning booths from sponsors and partners ✔ Huge parties 🍻
11. Remembering Ryan Weaver (1984-2025) ✔ The Voice of SymfonyCasts: Ryan’s engaging and humorous screencast series on API Platform made complex topics accessible and fun for thousands of developers worldwide. ✔ Significant API Platform Contributor: He was instrumental in shaping the framework, dedicating his talent to writing important features and improving the developer experience. ✔ Our Conference Speaker: He shared his knowledge and enthusiasm from this very stage, bringing our community closer together. A Lasting Legacy
13. One Framework, Multiple API Architectural Styles
14. One Structure, Multiple architectures namespace App\ApiResource; use ApiPlatform\Metadata\ApiResource\ApiResource; #[ApiResource] class Book { public ?int $id = null; /** The title of this book */ public string $title; }
15. Hydra OpenAPI HAL JSON:API GraphQL Machine accessible hypermedia API (REST/HATEOS) 2015, me, f55cfce Machine-readable interface definition for web services 2016, Hamza Amrouche, #591 Simple REST/HATEOAS format 2016, Hamza Amrouche, #608 Set of conventions for JSON-based web APIs 2017, Baptiste Meyer, #1175 Advanced query language for APIs 2017, Alan Poulain, #1358 Mercure Async API protocol, data is pushed to clients in real time 2018, me, #2282 Supported architectures
17. gRPC
18. gRPC gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Calls) is a modern, open-source framework for building high-performance APIs. Unlike traditional REST APIs that use JSON over HTTP, gRPC uses a more efficient binary format called Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) over HTTP/2.
19. gRPC: Key Features ✔ Fast & Efficient: The use of Protobuf and HTTP/2 results in significantly faster communication and lower latency ✔ Strongly-Typed: Defines a strict schema for messages, preventing errors and ensuring data consistency ✔ Language Agnostic: Supports multiple programming languages, making it ideal for microservices where different services might be built with different technologies
20. gRPC: Use cases ✔ Microservices: internal communication between services written in different languages ✔ IoT: efficient binary protocol, perfect for connected devices and objects ✔ Critical components: optimized for resiliency and speed
21. Typical gRPC Architecture
22. gRPC Service Definition // The greeting service definition. service Greeter { // Sends a greeting rpc SayHello (HelloRequest) returns (HelloReply) {} } // The request message containing the user's name. message HelloRequest { string name = 1; } // The response message containing the greetings message HelloReply { string message = 1; }
23. gRPC PHP Server
24. gRPC and PHP: Server 😱
25. FrankenPHP to the Rescue
26. FrankenPHP A modern app server for PHP apps: ✔ Replaces NGINX+FPM or Apache+mod_php ✔ Built for easy deployments: ◦ compatible with Docker, can embed your app in the binary! ✔ The fastest PHP engine (in worker mode) ✔ 103 Early Hints, Mercure, Vulcain… ✔ Compatible with all existing PHP apps ✔ Included in the API Platform distribution
27. FrankenPHP Extensions ✔ New in FrankenPHP 1.8 ✔ Write PHP extensions in Go! ✔ High-performance concurrency with goroutines ✔ Use the numerous existing Go libraries ✔ Share data between requests ✔ Run code entirely concurrently
29. Extensions Features ✔ Helper to register the PHP extension ✔ Helpers to convert Zend Engine types to Go types (and vice versa) ✔ Code generator to generate the C boilerplate code ✔ New in the upcoming FrankenPHP version, PHP workers for extension ◦ Ex: in-process Symfony Messenger worker
31. FrankenPHP gRPC
33. FrankenPHP gRPC ✔ Run a high performance gRPC server with FrankenPHP ✔ Write gRPC service handlers in PHP: handlers run in a worker loop ✔ Write gRPC service handlers in Go ✔ Write gRPC service handlers in a mix of PHP and Go 🤯 ✔ All features supported by the gRPC for Go library ✔ Entirely written in Go, no C code! ✔ API Platform compatibility!
34. Create a Go Module go mod init \ example.com/mygrpcserver
35. Create a Protobuf Definition syntax = "proto3"; option go_package = "example.com/mygrpcserver/helloworld"; package helloworld; service Greeter { rpc SayHello (HelloRequest) returns (HelloReply) {} } message HelloRequest { string name = 1; } message HelloReply { string message = 1; }
36. Generate the Go code protoc \ --go_out=.\ --go_opt=paths=source_relative \ --go-grpc_out=. \ --go-grpc_opt=paths=source_relative \ helloworld/helloworld.proto
37. Register Your gRPC Server func init() { phpGrpc.RegisterGrpcServerFactory(func() *grpc.Server { s := grpc.NewServer() pb.RegisterGreeterServer(s, &server{}) reflection.Register(s) return s }) }
38. Write Your Service in Go func (s *server) SayHello(_ context.Context, in *pb.HelloRequest) (*pb.HelloReply, error) { // Convert the request to a map[string]any var phpRequest map[string]any mapstructure.Decode(in, &phpRequest) // Call the PHP code, pass the map as a PHP associative array phpResponse := phpGrpc.HandleRequest(phpRequest) // Convert the PHP response (a map) back to a HelloReply struct var response pb.HelloReply mapstructure.Decode(phpResponse.(frankenphp.AssociativeArray).Map, &response) return &response, nil }
39. Write Your Handler in PHP // grpc-worker.php $handler = static function (array $request): array { // Do something with the gRPC request return ['message' => "Hello, {$request['Name']}"]; }; while (\frankenphp_handle_request($handler)) {}
40. Alternative: API Platform Handler // api-platform-grpc-worker.php // Require Composer’s autoloader, boot API Platform, retrieve services… $handler = static function (array $grpcRequest): array { $request = $objectMapper->map((object) $grpcRequest, MyRequest::class); $reply = $apiPlatformProcessor->process($request); return (array) $reply; }; while (\frankenphp_handle_request($handler)) {}
41. The Caddyfile { frankenphp grpc { address :50051 # Optional worker grpc-worker.php # Optional min_threads 50 # Optional, defaults to runtime.NumCPU() } }
42. Build and Run CGO_ENABLED=1 \ CGO_CFLAGS="$(php-config --includes)" \ CGO_LDFLAGS="$(php-config --ldflags) $(php-config --libs)" \ xcaddy build ./caddy run
44. Next Steps ✔ Code already available on github.com/dunglas/frankenphp-grpc ✔ Polish the FrankenPHP feature (almost done) ✔ Generate the code of Go handler ✔ Generate the .proto file from API Platform resource classes ✔ Create a dedicated API Platform provider and processor (easy pick) ✔ Help welcome, API Platform = community
45. FOLLOW ME! @dunglas dunglas.dev / les-tilleuls.coop / api-platform.com Thank you! Any questions?