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Traditionally, PHP is used in web environments to produce HTML markup
that the user views in a web browser. The interaction between PHP and the
web server (Apache, AOLserver, Microsoft IIS, or whatever) happens through
a layer called SAPI (short for web Server API). A separate build of PHP is
required to interface with each type of web server through SAPI.
In this chapter, you explore the CLI (short for Command Line Interface)
server API, which makes PHP a traditional scripting language. This chapter
demonstrates using CLI for writing command-line tools as well as a stand-
alone server application.

By now, you must have noticed the use of macros here and there starting with
TSRM, which stands for Thread-Safe Resource Manager. These macros give
your extension the possibility of having its own global variables, as previously
mentioned. (more…)

The INI file (php.ini) implementation allows PHP extensions to register and
listen to their own custom INI entries. If these INI entries are assigned a
value either by php.ini, Apache’s .htaccess, or other configuration methods,
the registered INI variable will always be updated with the correct value. This
whole INI framework has many different options and allows for a lot of flexi-
bility. We cover the basics (which gives you a good start) and, with the help of
the other material in this chapter, allows you to do most of what you’ll need for
your day-to-day job. (more…)

You might want to use global C variables in your extension, either for your
own internal use or for receiving php.ini values of your extension’s registered
INI directives (INI is discussed in the next section). As PHP is designed to run
in multi-threaded environments, you shouldn’t define global variables on your
own. PHP supplies a mechanism that creates global variables for you, which
can be used both in threaded and non-threaded environments. You should
always use this mechanism and not define your own global variables. These
global variables are then accessed via a macro and used just as if they are reg-
ular global variables. (more…)