How can PHP talk to a C# process running on mono?

Question

I am coding a web application in PHP and it has some performance intensive parts that I'd like to rewrite in a compiled language. I know that I could probably get this done more easily just by writing a C++ extension for PHP, but I'm a bit too spoiled by managed languages like C#, so I'd like to avoid C++ if possible.

If I wanted a PHP script to execute a function inside of a running C# (on mono) process, how could I do this? My first guess is to have PHP open a socket to the C# process, do the work, and close the socket, but I think that would add unnecessary overhead.

Are named pipes something that could solve this problem? If so, do they work on windows (my development machine), and how do I use them from C#?

If not, what other options do I have?

Answer 1

Have you considered using the PHP.NET compiler, Phalanger?

• Runs some very well-known PHP applications, including:
  • MediaWiki
  • PhpMyAdmin
  • PhpBB 2 & 3
• Works under Mono
• Performs substantially better than PHP 4.3.7 on Apache (PDF: see benchmark at end)
• Call .NET libraries (including your own) from PHP (PDF)
• Call PHP from other .NET languages
• PHP/CLR Language Extensions (PDF) make it a First Class .NET Language

Answer 2

Another option is to write a PHP module that embeds the Mono runtime in your application.

Here is the documentation on embedding the Mono runtime in your application, in this case, it would be PHP:

http://mono-project.com/Embedding_Mono