PHP and Symfony Apps As Standalone Binaries

Distributing PHP applications is quite complicated. For instance, to run a Symfony project in production, a web server, the PHP engine, and the appropriate PHP extensions need to be installed. Their versions and configurations must be compatible with the app. Because PHP is an interpreted language, the application source code must also be available. Composer dependencies as well... and things are even more difficult if some of them are private.

Of course, these days, containers can help. But what if we could make things even simpler: a single distributable binary that's self-executing? Download a single file, give it the execution bit, and type "./my-app php-server": boom! Your Symfony application is up and running, served over HTTP/3 with a valid TLS certificate! If you also want to distribute CLI commands written in PHP, we've got your back.

Thanks to the latest features of FrankenPHP, the dream is now a reality! Let's discover how to ship PHP and Symfony applications as standalone binaries, web server, PHP included!

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1. Symfony Apps As Standalone Binaries The story of a successful experimentation
2. Kévin Dunglas: ➔ CEO @ Les-Tilleuls.coop ➔ FrankenPHP and API Platform creator ➔ Symfony Core Team ➔ PHP and Go contributor @dunglas
3. 70+ API, Web and Cloud Experts ➔ Dev, consultancy and hosting ➔ 100% employee-owned co-op ✊ ➔ API Platform creators 🕷 ➔ Symfony backers 🎼 ➔ PHP Foundation advisory board 🐘 ➔ contact@les-tilleuls.coop 💌
4. Prerequisites to Deploy a Symfony App in Prod ➔ A web server (NGINX, Caddy, Apache…) ➔ A PHP executor PHP-FPM (most likely) ➔ Usually, some PHP extensions curl, pdo_*, gd, apcu... ➔ Usually, a database server PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB…
5. Deploying your Symfony App When your server(s) is ready, you need to: ➔ Get the latest stable version of app source code ➔ Install the dependencies of your project: composer install --no-dev -a
6. The Good Old Days of FTP 👴
7. FTP/SCP, Shared Hosting 👴 ➔ Easy (and usually cheap) ➔ No (or limited) control over • PHP version • Extensions • Config ➔ Not possible to install custom extra services (Redis…)
8. Your Own Servers (or Computer) ➔ Full control over everything ➔ You are on your own for everything • Initial setup • Security • Performance • Upgrades…
9. Platforms as a Service
10. Platforms As a Service ➔ git push and done… ➔ … as long as your app is pretty standard ➔ The platform installs, maintains and optimizes the infrastructure (hardware and software) for you
11. Symfony & Docker
12. The Symfony Docker skeleton ➔ Skeleton with good defaults ➔ Full control over everything ➔ Extensible ➔ Same environment in dev, in your CI pipelines and in prod ➔ You still need servers ➔ Can be hard in prod (knowledge!)
13. Let’s Experiment!
14. Reminders: PHP ➔ PHP is an interpreted language (script) ➔ The CPU cannot execute directly a PHP script ➔ An interpreter is needed ➔ The official interpreter (php-src) is written in C ➔ The PHP interpreter doesn’t contain a (production-grade) web server
15. Reminders: dynamic vs static linking ➔ The PHP interpreter and its extensions depends on C and C++ libraries (ex: libcurl, OpenSSL, libsodium) ➔ These libraries can be linked with the interpreter dynamically or statically ➔ Dynamic linking: the library is a shared external binary (.so file on Linux) loaded at runtime by programs. Typical for PHP. ➔ Static linking: the library is embedded in the program binary. Hard to do for PHP. © Tatiana Fernández
16. Our Goals ➔ Distribute PHP apps as standalone binaries ➔ The binary must work without a local PHP or web server ➔ The end-user shouldn’t even know the app is written in PHP ➔ SO the binary must contain • A web server • The PHP executor • The PHP code and the assets • The vendors ➔ The binary must be statically compiled, with no external dependencies
17. Our Weapons
18. ➔ Written in Go 😻 • Can be compiled statically • Can embed static C libraries, such as PHP • Can embed arbitraries files, such as our app, assets and vendors ➔ Extensible with modules ➔ Prod ready • HTTP/2, HTTP/3, Early Hints… • Automatic HTTPS ⚔ Our Weapons: The Caddy Web Server
19. ⚔ Our Weapons: FrankenPHP 1.0 🎉 New website, created by Laury Sorriaux.
20. ➔ Standalone Go library ➔ Embed the official PHP executor in your Go programs ➔ New SAPI for Go net/http ➔ Caddy module using the library ➔ Unique features: • Worker mode ⚡ • 103 Early Hints • Extensible in Go ⚔ Our Weapons: FrankenPHP
21. ⚔ More About FrankenPHP
22. ➔ Compile statically: • PHP (CLI, FPM, libphp…) • Its dependencies (pkgconfig…) • Most PHP extensions (curl, gd, apcu, intl…) • Most PHP extensions dependencies (libxml, libpng…) 🔁 ➔ CLI tool, written in PHP ➔ Entirely configurable ➔ Used by FrankenPHP, Native PHP, Laravel Laravel Herd… ⚔ Our Weapons: static-php-cli
23. ⚔ Our Weapons: static-php-cli
24. ⚔ Our Weapons: Go embed Package
25. Summary We’ll create a static binary containing: ➔ A web server (Caddy) ➔ PHP (and its dependencies) ➔ The extensions we need (and their dependencies) ➔ FrankenPHP ➔ Our PHP code ➔ The dependencies of our PHP code ➔ Our assets
26. I’ve Done The Wiring Work For You!
27. Let’s Try
28. Prepare your app $ echo APP_ENV=prod > .env.local $ echo APP_DEBUG=0 >> .env.local $ rm -Rf .git/, tests/ $ composer install --no-dev -a $ composer dump-env prod
29. $ git clone \ https://github.com/dunglas/frankenphp $ cd frankenphp $ EMBED=/path/to/my/sfapp \ ./build-static.sh # 🎉🎉🎉 $ cp dist/frankenphp-<os>-<arch> my-app Build (Linux and Mac)!
30. Run Web server (HTTPS, HTTP/3…) $ ./my-app php-server --domain=example.com Worker mode (HTTPS, HTTP/3) $ ./my-app php-server -w public/index.php CLI $ ./my-app php-cli bin/console app:my-cmd
32. Ready-Made Dockerfile FROM dunglas/frankenphp:static-builder # Copy your app WORKDIR /go/src/app/dist/app COPY . . # Build the static binary, be sure to select only the PHP extensions you want WORKDIR /go/src/app/ RUN EMBED=dist/app/ \ PHP_EXTENSIONS=ctype,iconv,pdo_sqlite \ ./build-static.sh
33. More Options Environment variables: ➔ PHP_VERSION: the PHP version to use (currently, 8.2 or 8.3) ➔ PHP_EXTENSIONS: PHP extensions to build (build only what you need to reduce the binary size) ➔ PHP_EXTENSIONS_LIB: extra libs (ex: libjpeg for GD) to build ➔ FRANKENPHP_VERSION: the FrankenPHP version to use
34. Any questions? Come at our booth! Thanks! frankenphp.dev @dunglas