.Net Foundation On .NET, 26 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Getting Started PeachPie

Description

Peachpie is an open source project that allows for a seamless interoperability between PHP and .NET applications.

In this episode, we’re joined by Benjamin and Jakub who are here to show us how some of the interesting features of PeachPie work.

[T02:13] - How did the PeachPie project get stared?
[T03:56] - How does PeachPie uses the DLR?
[T08:16] - Why would you want to run Php on .NET
[T11:42] - Creating a new PeachPie project
[T16:03] - Integrating with the build system
[T19:14] - Performance profiling
[T23:35] - What version of Php does PeachPie support?
[T27:08] - Language interoperability between C# and Php
[T33:48] - Using PeachPie in an ASP.NET Core application

PeachPie Homepage
https://www.peachpie.io/

PeachPie on GitHub
https://github.com/peachpiecompiler

Dynamic Language Runtime Overview
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/reflection-and-codedom/dynamic-language-runtime-overview

Introduction to ASP.NET Core
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/introduction-to-aspnet-core?view=aspnetcore-3.1

#dotnet #php #webdev #aspnet

A

In this episode of the on.net show we're going to learn how we can integrate php with our.net applications using an open source project called peachpie, so stay tuned and check it.

A

A

Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the on.net show. My name is celso phillip, and today I'm joined by some folks from the peach title now you might have heard about peach pie before, but it's a really interesting project that allows you to run php and dotnet together. So before we kind of dive into it. Gentlemen, why don't you introduce yourselves? You know, let the folks know who you are and and tell us a little bit about what is it that you do.

B

Okay, so I guess I'll start so my name is ben, I'm uh co-founder of io level together with jacob. So this is the company that administers and develops the peach by software, and we've been doing this for quite some time, but jacob has been doing it for the better part of his life. So.

C

Okay, my name is jacob. uh We are developing this software, like since university. It started as a university project, so uh it's like a hobby for us, but also a grown-up project that allows to compile and to run the entire php code as a regular dotnet language. So it makes a php language, a part of the whole dotnet ecosystem.

C

Similarly, to c sharp, we have a compiler, we have runtime libraries, we have a base class library, so uh is the is the entire language implemented in in.net 4.0 and allowing to interoperate between all those languages on the justice platform and also allowing you to take advantage of the garbage collector dot, not just a time compiler and all the, for example? You get packages or the other projects buttons and just not together, together with the php.

A

Cool now I kind of want to go back to something you said earlier and that you said this was a university project. I had no idea that you all were working on this for so long. Can you tell me a little bit about what was the beginning moments like what was the genesis of hey? This is a project that we want to take on and work on like what was that like for you.

C

That's actually pretty interesting, because uh the idea was uh started on the charles charles university in prague in czech republic, and it actually started a few guys that who are now working in microsoft. So uh they started this. Like I don't know, 15 16 years ago the project was called phallenger and thanks to this, the guys learned how to deal with dynamic languages.

C

I think it. It helped started the dlr in dotnet and then the languages like ivan python, ivan ruby and so on. So a lot other features in dotnet are actually built. Thanks to this idea to this little project and me and other colleagues in the university took over the project and continued supporting it and uh implementing more more features.

C

So I guess I guess it was like. Four years ago we started a whole new uh platform, peach pie that learned from all the mistakes and from all the issues, and uh we try to make it properly on dot and standard and using the roslin compiler platform.

A

Nice, nice, could you talk to me a little bit about like the dlr and how you're using it. So I know a lot of folks. um Physically.Net developers might not even remember that we have a dynamic language runtime, that's what the dlr scene.

B

A

So could you give us like a really quick two minute? This is what the dlr is, and this is what we do with it. Well,.

C

uh Okay, what we use from the dr part of the dotnet is the call side mechanism of of the dotnet. So uh once in your code, like in c sharp when you use the keyboard dynamic, you don't know what a type is going to be there. You don't know what methods it does it. It has.

C

So uh compiler basically postpones the resolution and the actual call to the method to runtime, so it creates so-called call site, which is an object where, with a delegate to some kind of mechanism to call site to call site resolution and on runtime, when you actually need to call this particular line of code on runtime, it gets resolved it. It checks. What runtime object is there and it calls the binder methods that resolves uh the actual method that has to be called in this place. It caches the result.

C

It creates the msil code that performs uh the actual the actual code that should be there and compiles it in memory and says it as a as a runtime delegate.

C

So uh it's a mechanism of allowing to use dynamic stuff in compiled language by postponing the compilation actually to the runtime, where you, where you actually know what types of objects you have in this place, and there is a there- is a great deal of caching and and and features that allows you to uh to do it just once, and the runtime will remember what was there and it checks the types for you and it works. Pretty nice.

A

Right so I'm guessing because I'm kind of thinking about what it's like to actually build another language on top of the dotnet runtime right. um So you mentioned a little bit earlier. You talked about iron, python and design ruby and then now there's also peach pie. So I'm guessing like this. This dlr infrastructure is there and it allows you to. um I guess- support some of those more dynamic syntaxes of those other languages on top of dotnet, which is a more strict right. It's type check. It's strongly typed.

A

You know, which is a little bit different to some other languages. So it's almost like the interoperability layer between going from one language to another like different. You.

B

A

From dot-net to like python or from.net.

C

Yes, that's right uh this, dr infrastructure. It also allows you to provide some kind of interfaces that defines what to do when this happens. So your like php objects can implement this interface and they can tell okay. If you are going to call a method on me, uh then I don't care about uh leather casing. I don't care uh about if it's an integer or string, because I can do all the conversions and python can have his own rules and c-sharp has its own rules. So all these languages, like can work together. Thanks to this.

C

So if you are calling a c-sharp objects, there are more strict rules. If you are calling a php method, it uses this php uh runtime binder, which has like less strict rules. So uh it's it's a little bit weird because you have like your c sharp code with three variables and you are calling three methods on them and each of them can be interpreted a little bit differently because those objects are coming from different different languages, different worlds.

A

C

It works like this.

A

Together, so so, with your project in particular, we're talking about running php code, php applications, php products on top net right right.

A

Tell me: what is the motivation for a company wanting to do that like what are some of the benefits I get from that? Why would I want to do that? You know like what's that, what's the elevator pitch there for future future.

C

I think that's pretty good.

B

Yeah this is the the traditional question we always get asked. So um I mean there are a couple of reasons. I think you would divide it into two main categories of reasons, so either you already have an existing code base or you're trying to build something new and much more often than not.

B

It's the first one where you have a company that has some kind of legacy php code base and they want to do something with it, whether it's connected with parts of their code base that might be in net or use some of the modern.net mechanisms or modern.net constructs or something like that, or they just have a very, very old code base.

B

That's now totally obsolete, not very secure, perhaps not very performant and there's an allure of running it on the very fast optimized.net core runtime uh or you know, with all the security benefits that come with net, but sometimes we actually get clients that are looking to build something new with peach buy. So just very recently. Actually, today, we were asked about the potential to uh incorporate twig, which is this php templating engine into net, which is a completely new thing, and they want to build a new website with this.

B

So that might also be the reason most often it's the first one where you're interoperating legacy with modern things or you might be interested in in creating something new using some of these individual benefits that both of the platforms have to offer.

A

B

And then, when you think.

A

About it, too, like you're, essentially you're, creating like the glue in the middle that can bring these ecosystems together right. So if there's a cool.net, you get a package that I want to use in my php application, like there's an interoperability from that side of the php person that wants to leverage a.net resource, but then also like there's the net person that might want to leverage a php resource, whether it's again it's a tool or you know a framework or an application or whatever.

A

But then I can have it running on the same type of infrastructure like the rest of my code and products within my company, yeah.

C

That's right because php is very, very rich for packages and components, because it's uh like really really widespread platform and everybody is making some components. So actually we are working on translating all those little packages that solves little issues like a cryptocurrency libraries uh like this uh templatic engines, so they have a lot of a lot of templates that they want to render on the web page, and now we can render them on the razer page. So we can do things like this and the other other way around as well.

C

So you have all the stuff in dotnet all the new get packages, everything all the c sharp projects and you can just reference them to your php project and use them just like that without anything else, without any conversions marshalling anything, it's just it's just there, so it allows both way. Interoperability of those two languages together.

A

Well, why don't we? Why don't we switch over to your desktop and let's take a look at a demo, because I'd really love to see like how this stuff works.

C

Sure sure sure, so, uh let's start with uh something small, let's start with a brand new project, we'll create a console project uh in php language that will translate into the into the dotnet project.

C

First like uh php is another part of your.net sdk. So first we install some templates, so we can. We can create projects. uh For that reason, uh we have a new nuget package, peach pie templates that contains con that contains some project files.

C

Let's make, let's make use of that. So first we install the templates using.net new dash. I peach pie templates and the latest version. This will download the uh the templates from the nuget.org install it and it lists everything I have already here and you can see. I have a new console application template in language php. I also have class library in php and I'm sure I have some websites in php as well.

C

So what I do now, I will make a directory like um php console.

C

And let's create a project dotnet new console in language, php.

C

And that's it and, as you can see, we have an ms build project file, which is a project file for your for your project. It can be open, visual studio as well and some sample program php and, as you are familiar with dotnet, you can just write dotnet, for example, build. Let's start with build.

C

It runs the compiler, builds the application and.

C

Which starts the build again and run the application. So now we have a console application in php. uh That runs on some notes and that's that's all you have to do to create the application on.net, let's open it in visual studio, because uh in there you can see like more more features on this.

C

So this is my php code. It's a regular php syntax! Nothing like differs from the regular php, so it's backward compatible with normal php.

C

But I can open it visual studio and visual studio things, it's a dotnet project, so I have things like references to packages in here or to frameworks. As you can see, it's dotnet core app and that's it. I have the operations like build, rebuild clean pack or publish uh basically everything you can do with uh with the c-sharp project, but also uh even we didn't like implement any debugging function.

C

Functionality the compiler produces the pdb files that are used by the debugger, so in visual studio we can put a breakpoint in here, run it from visual studio and.

C

Okay and it runs the application with uh all the debugging features we know so we have uh with the output window, we have the call stack, we have the locals and watch and threads everything and we are debugging the php on top of.net and visual studio like this and you can, you can see visual studio just thinks it's a dotnet. It shows the costa clacking.net and everything. So it's it's a regular larger.net app and I can take advantage of everything it. It allows me to do step through and continue.

C

So that's uh that's like the first uh smallest sample we can, we can show, but you may be wondering uh how did I install the compiler itself, because this was a brand new computer and I didn't install any php compiler in here and still still I'm running and debugging the php code.

C

So uh this is thanks to the new ms build uh 16 features where you can specify in your project file the sdk you want to use and the ns build, which is a part of net core sdk, will download the sdk from nuget by itself and allows you to like hijack your compiler process. So what you can see here is a project file of my php application and at the top you can see it specifies the sdk which will be used, and this sdk is a new get package that contains actually compiler itself.

C

It contains the binaries it contains all the nsb targets and settings files so on the first use, dotnet itself downloads, this nuget package and installs this compiler into the nuget cache and uses the amazon targets and everything uh in order to run the build targets. The clean charges, the pack targets and everything which is implemented in this sdk and the rest of this is a regular uh amazon stuff. You are familiar with so it's c-sharp stuff, but the one difference, uh I'm compiling php files in here not not see as far as in here.

C

So again, I can. I can specify whatever I want in here and as I'm used to.

A

Yeah, I think this is really impressive because, as I'm I'm looking at you go through this demo, I'm seeing not only is there just like the ability to build and compile a project, but you you have completely like, like you said, like you've hijacked like the build system right, so you have like your project sdk.

A

You know you tied into the debugger um I'm guessing you're, just using the built-in syntax, highlighting from visual studio for php. I'm guessing you didn't build that yourself right right.

C

A

C

Part of visual studio itself like there are third-party extensions that allows you to integrate more php features into visual studio, but the basic highlighting is right in the visual studio. So so uh it's just there, but of course uh we have like peach pie extension for visual studio that allows you to create new projects right from the visual studio. So if you are interested, there is a peach pie for visual studio that adds those those project. Those project templates into visual studio.

A

And I'm guessing as you install that extension to visual studio. That just adds in like the templating and then you know like.

B

A

Stuff you did on the command line is what that adds to you in seconds. You just have it in that visual dialogue that you can start interacting.

C

Yeah right now the extension just adds the project templates, but in the future we might uh extend it for whatever is needed.

A

Okay, now I know you wanted to also show some performance, I'm kind of interested in seeing that, because I'd love to see like what do. What does like some light? Benchmarking look like with php running on.,.

C

Well, actually, uh if you write some more complex code, that actually does something so.

B

I have prepared.

C

If small small for loop in here.

C

B

C

And what's great about this always integration? I have those diagnostic tools right in the visual studio and it just works. I don't have to do anything. So what I do is, I just tell it to start: recording the cpu profiling and okay, put a breakpoint in here.

C

Just run it, and now we can see everything we are used to like uh the garbage collections, all those all those locks, all those tracings and everything right here. uh Let's continue make it running, and now I'm profiling, the php code in visualstudio on.net, so I can select a portion of it and it tells me okay. There is a lot of those jittering and stuff.

C

Also, it highlights me the code that performs the most of the logic and everything as you are used to from from the c-sharp right. So now I'm profiling, the php up with all those two links, as I'm used to uh now. I see I have to get rid of my echo because it it eats up to 97 to the cpu.

C

And uh that's it that's how we can like improve the php applications. Undone, because, uh like the big benefit of this, is I don't see just my code. I can see also uh if I disable just my code, I ordered it. Okay, I can navigate to.

C

Was it calling calling like this? No, I can navigate to to this, and it also shows me maybe it's too small code. It also shows me the internals what's going inside, so it's not just reading a variable, I uh that consumes the cpu. It tells me what exactly is happening under the hood, so I can see yeah I can see there is some dynamic class stop invoke and so on.

C

Okay, which might be useful because uh in a regular php, if you are profiling, your regular php code on a regular php runtime, you just see there is a your function that consumes that much cpu. But you don't you don't see. Okay, there is a string concatenation happening or there is a memory allocation and so on, and with this I can see, I can see all the stuff.

C

But if you are asking about the real benchmarks of of php uh on.net, uh I'm not sure how to.

B

I mean I guess there are. There are two you can go on our website where we have all kinds of micro benchmarks. The second thing that we often do is we're part of uh tech empowers benchmarking, which.

C

Is a little bit.

B

um It's hard because we're comparing peach by projects to pure php projects and then there are really optimized projects just for that particular benchmark. So it's not it's a very reputable benchmark, every project kind of creates their own version just to be at the top of that benchmark, but yeah in general.

B

uh We we perform benchmarks every now and then we also have tried to test the performance of entire apps um running real world apps running on php versus peachbuy, and the general performance is that for the most part it's either the same or a lot better, depending on what's happening in the code. But.

A

I also was curious about what version of php does peach by support today.

C

Right so synthetically, we support the latest syntax. We even support the newer syntax that even php supports. We support their their accepted rfcs. So we already have all the newest newest language syntaxes like throw expressions and all the all the attributes stuff, and we also have generics which php doesn't so uh we support everything uh there are. I guess there are two uh two features we don't.

C

First is we have a different garbage collection because we use the garbage collection of.net, which is like undeterministic. So it's a little bit different behavior and that's pretty much it. Then there is a second a second like uh compatibility issue.

C

Everything in php is written in the c language or the libraries on the c language are in the c language.

B

C

Strictly strictly managed, so everything we support is written like again in c-sharp, so we we've written all the base class library that exists in php. Then we rewritten it into the c sharp. So all the small functions like string length, regular expressions, all the hash tables, all the dictionaries. Everything is rewritten, including the database layers mysql and everything there is. There is about 10 000 functions in php and those were rewritten into the c-sharp.

C

So if we are doing the benchmarks of the php application running on.net, um most of most of the features are faster. Sometimes some our library function is slower because we just didn't have enough time to make it super fast. So so they are like a regular expression, implementation, which is a bit slower than the one in in the php, because in the one in php, is developed for like 12 years and written in c language and and so on.

C

So there's like this, but that's a kind of stuff that we can see in the profiling individual studio. So once we are doing the profiling, we can see. Okay, there is a regular expression running that we have to optimize.

A

Got it so then, I'm guessing! That means that, from uh from an interop perspective like you're, not you didn't download a php, executable and embed it in a dll and now.

C

You're interrupting.

A

To it like you've.

C

A

Rewritten the foundation.

C

Everything is rewritten all the parsing analysis. There is a there's, a huge deal with uh code flow analysis, because php doesn't have types like you, don't specify the types on most places you can take advantage of so-called type juggling, so your variable changes its type and that's the kind of stuff we have to deal with. uh So we have uh like type analysis, um algorithms that hi uh that guesses, what types will be there- and this allows us to optimize the code.

A

You know I'd love to see um I'd love to see a demo about the interrupt story. You know, okay, you know like like I'd love to have to see like if I had this php application that I wanted to bring in like some nougat packages, or you know, use some dot net dlls. What would that look like? Okay,.

C

But yeah, that's a great it's a great uh sample. First first, you can see we already referenced the pitch by app package in here. This is the package that contains all the php based uh base class library. So all the basic php functions are in this library, but by default your dot application references, this dotted core framework. So I have the system runtime. I have the mscorlip I have. I have all the basic.net libraries already referenced by my application.

C

So what I can do in here. I can actually use everything that's already in the dot net. I can just use it in my php code without like doing anything. So, let's start with something that everybody knows like our system date time and I can just use the php syntax to access its properties to call its methods and things like this. So uh let's put a new variable, let's print this variable, so that's it! That's it. uh I'm already referencing the dotted core application.

C

Now, I'm running the application- and this is executed like like nothing else in the locals. I can see my s variable contains the result of this method and I can print it into the console using the echo. So that's the one way you can do you can just use the dotted stuff in your php code like this, without without anything else, uh you can also add references to other nuget packages in dotnet, so.

A

If you want to add like json.net or something to manage excel sheets or anything like that, like, yes, any any, you know yes or compatible package.

C

Anything from here uh I haven't tried random random packages before so, I'm not sure what to try, but you can try to add any package from your nuget gallery and those classes. Those methods will be just there, because it's it's just like a c-sharp language built on roseland, so it sees all the types and it allows you uh to use them actually, actually all the all the php stuff. All the php based libraries are also written in c-sharp and referenced as a new get package. So.

B

C

We are using something from from php, like uh I don't know, like array object, which is a strictly uh php thing. This is written in c sharp as well. So that's that's no different to to using any other dotted library.

C

You know, but this is. This is the one way you can you can do. uh We can, for example, uh create a c-sharp project in here and.

C

I'm class library.net standard in a c-sharp language is it nc, sharpies class library, one okay.

A

That's a very creative name. I love it.

C

Yes, I I think we all know what what it does right: let's create a function that returns something it accepts, string s, for example, length of the string. Why not.

A

C

A breakpoint in here and it's a namespace uh so first, let's add, let's add a project reference to our php project like this.

C

So now my php project is referencing, this c-sharp project and what I can do now.

C

Instance, new and, as you can see, I'm using the c sharp name spaces in php syntax uh everything like one in here I can create the object. We can create a constructor in here, so we can track what's happening.

C

Here, hello and, for example, write write the result and that's it. uh I have created c sharp c class library and I'm debugging php code in here. So now we are going to jump into here on the cost like you can see, we've been in php and now we are seamlessly transferring to our chart project next line next line in here now we are here. The variable contains the dotnet object in here, one more step and we are again in the c sharp on the right uh this value.

C

This hello is coming from php, but it's all the same string and then we are going back and the end. So in this way we are just jumping uh between those two languages.

B

C

Without any overhead I can, I can make use of the dot and debugger and like go back and try it one more time which I like, because you cannot do it in php and also in the calls like you can see. Okay, there is a language c, sharp and there's a language php.

A

Oh, it's awesome. I didn't. I didn't you know honestly. I have never noticed that there is a language.

C

Because there's always c sharp.

A

Right right, right, yeah, I never never actually pictured that but yeah.

A

That makes a lot of sense, and I love how easy it is well, not easy, but, like I love how seamlessly like it goes back and forth with the debugging right right, because a lot of developers are used to visual studio, they're used to this family of tools and their refactoring tools and shortcuts and all those things, and so, if I could do all these together in the same solution using these different languages, I think that's a huge productivity benefit for a lot of folks now I know we don't have too much more time left, but I think you're going to show us one more demo.

A

Right, like you, wanted to show us really quickly how I could do a web application. Okay,.

C

Let's create a web application because uh we have compiled everything into into the.net.

B

C

In order to run it as a website, we create a regular asp.net core website in c-sharp. I have it right here: web application for sake of simplicity, empty website. You can use your existing website in c sharp with all the razer and mvc stuff because it works like together.

C

So let's start with my startup code in here and now I would like to like call my program from as a web page as a web page. So I would like to have written like number five on my website.

B

C

So I already have my routing endpoints everything, but I need to add a php uh request pipeline a php into my request pipeline. For that we have. uh We have a nuget package. We have a library that provides this request pipeline integration, it's called it's very important. It's called pitch by ice net core web like this.

C

This package implements the asp.net core integration. So let's just add it to my uh to my c-sharp kestrel web server, restoring.

A

I said I'm guessing once that's enabled like we'll go through that usual step of you know, we'll go.

C

A

C

It's not that it's not hard, because uh what I do is, I add project reference to my php project.

A

C

And uh is it there? Is there so I'm now I'm referencing the project, and now I just write use php in here and.

B

C

That's it, I just run it, and this handler will find now I run the code. Oh sorry, I'm running the wrong one. uh Let's make this a starter project. Now I run the code on es express, for example, and.

C

Here we have the browser, and now it won't do anything. I I think there is this default hello, world stuff.

C

What we can do is we can request this program php and is it yeah? It's it's loading pdb.

A

Okay, so it's loading slowing but at some point, it'll hit that use php middleware and then it's already.

C

It actually, it already hit the the middleware.

C

I think it's still loading pdbs.

A

You need to stop it. Do you need a rebuild? Maybe can you stop? No.

C

I just try it again.

C

Because this configure method uh will initialize your locus pipeline and now, if I request the program pdb here, it hits.

A

C

And again and defenders number five so uh that that's it in this way I'll integrate my uh php project data reference into my request pipeline, and if you want to configure it, you use the same mechanism in your configure services.

C

So you just write: use uh services, use php to be somewhere in here at php's php, and it has your uh yes, your standard way of configuring things, so you can, for example, also start sessions or things like this.

A

And this way you configure.

C

The php also you can use the app settings, the json and stuff.

A

C

A

Yolo showed us so much stuff and there's like so much more for us to kind of think of um so before we stop this episode. Let's talk really quickly about. Where can folks go to to learn more about beachbody like? Is there a github repo? Is there a website? Do you all have twitter accounts, and things like that like? Where could folks reach out to you and learn more.

B

Yeah absolutely so we do have, of course, a github repo which, uh maybe you can we have it open here. Actually, so it's peach pie, compiler, slash peach pie, it's it's a.net foundation project, so we've been in the dot net foundation since I think 2017.

B

uh We do, of course, have a website as well, which is peachbuy.io yep and we do have a twitter which is pchp compiler, I think so yep. We very much appreciate anybody that follows us or that submits issues when they run into any problems or if they have questions all that is greatly appreciated. Anybody that wants to contribute, of course, is free too we're in the.net foundation. So uh all the legal stuff surrounding it is is provided by microsoft or the.net foundation, so yeah. We we appreciate any support.

A

All right, hey! Well, thank you so much for coming on and showing us this demo.

A

um I know there's tons of folks, particularly where I am in south florida, that use a lot of php, so I'm pretty sure they'd be really excited in in checking this out and giving it a try with some of their existing projects, um but we're definitely gonna have to have you all come back on again another time to talk a little bit more about some of the other things we can do with peach pie, but until then like again, this has been another episode of the on that net show thank all of you for watching and again thanks.

A

You know to our folks here from peterby for coming on and showing us these really cool demos.

A