Phalcon 3.0 LTS: Blazing Speed Meets PHP 7 Compatibility

Remember our enthusiasm for Phalcon, the renowned high-performance PHP framework? This guide demonstrates a swift 5-minute setup on a Homestead Improved instance. Skip ahead to "Installation" if you're already familiar with Phalcon.

A Quick Recap

Phalcon, written in Zephir (a blend of C and PHP), creates highly optimized PHP extensions without requiring deep C knowledge. Zephir compiles to C, the foundation of PHP extensions. While initially a pure C extension (resulting in incredible speed but significant development hurdles), Phalcon's version 2 embraced Zephir. However, PHP 7's API shift left Zephir (and Phalcon) behind.

Now, with Phalcon 3.0 LTS, Zephir supports PHP 7! This means not only Phalcon but any Zephir code compiles for PHP 7, offering unparalleled speed and resource efficiency.

Installation

These instructions target an Ubuntu 16.04 instance with PHP 7 , Git, and Wget. We'll use the Homestead.yaml file for site definition.

Installing Phalcon:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:phalcon/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php7.0-phalcon
sudo phpenmod -v 7.0 -s ALL phalcon
sudo service php7.0-fpm restart

phpenmod enables the PHP extension. The -v flag specifies the PHP version (7.0), and -s ALL enables it for both CLI and FPM. If phpenmod is unavailable, manually copy the INI file:

sudo cp /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/phalcon.ini /etc/php/7.0/fpm/conf.d/20-phalcon.ini
sudo cp /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/phalcon.ini /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/20-phalcon.ini

The 20 prefix sets the loading priority. Verify the installation via phpinfo().

Testing with the Invo Demo App

Let's test with the Invo demo application.

Nginx Configuration:

Add your app to Homestead.yaml:

    - map: phalcon-tut.app
      to: /home/vagrant/Code/phalcon-tut/public

Update your /etc/hosts file to map phalcon-tut.app to your VM's IP. Run vagrant provision. Modify Nginx's location block:

Change:

location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

To:

location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?_url=$uri&$args;
    }

Restart Nginx: sudo service nginx restart

App Bootstrapping:

cd /home/vagrant/Code
git clone https://github.com/phalcon/invo phalcon-tut

Initialize the database (using utf8mb4 for improved compatibility):

echo 'CREATE DATABASE invo CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci' | mysql -u homestead -psecret
cat schemas/invo.sql | mysql -u homestead -psecret invo

Modify app/config/config.ini and set baseUri to /. Now Invo should be running.

Conclusion

This tutorial streamlined Phalcon's setup on PHP 7, showcasing its speed and ease of use with a demo app. With simplified installation and readily available test applications, give Phalcon a try and share your feedback. Consider using Zephir for optimizing your projects.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

(The FAQ section remains largely unchanged as it provides valuable information about PHP 7 and Phalcon. To maintain brevity, it's omitted here but can be easily appended from the original input.)

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