It walks you through the primary data structures and functions for interfacing with the PHP engine. It’s a little out-of-date, but it’s really the only starting point that I’ve seen on the subject.

Of course, there’s nothing like following by example. Find an extension that does something similar to what you want, and use it as a template.

Thanks for the tutorial. This was very helpful and I’ve got it working. Now, I am trying to call a C function from a c source file without converting the C file into an extension. Basically, I guess I would like to wrap C functions in a PHP extension.

Could you please show some examples on that?

Thanks,
Peter

Thanks in advance.

copy from the terminal follows
=====
/ext/sample $ phpize5
Configuring for:
PHP Api Version: 20090626
Zend Module Api No: 20090626
Zend Extension Api No: 220090626
jorgearr@compusis5 ~/Downloads/php-5.2.17/ext/sample $ ./configure –enable-sample
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e… /bin/grep
checking for egrep… /bin/grep -E
checking for a sed that does not truncate output… /bin/sed
checking for cc… cc
checking whether the C compiler works… yes
checking for C compiler default output file name… a.out
checking for suffix of executables…
checking whether we are cross compiling… no
checking for suffix of object files… o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler… yes
checking whether cc accepts -g… yes
checking for cc option to accept ISO C89… none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor… cc -E
checking for icc… no
checking for suncc… no
checking whether cc understands -c and -o together… yes
checking for system library directory… lib
checking if compiler supports -R… no
checking if compiler supports -Wl,-rpath,… yes
checking build system type… i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type… i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking target system type… i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for PHP prefix… /usr
checking for PHP includes… -I/usr/include/php5 -I/usr/include/php5/main -I/usr/include/php5/TSRM -I/usr/include/php5/Zend -I/usr/include/php5/ext -I/usr/include/php5/ext/date/lib -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
checking for PHP extension directory… /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs
checking for PHP installed headers prefix… /usr/include/php5
checking if debug is enabled… no
checking if zts is enabled… no
checking for re2c… no
configure: WARNING: You will need re2c 0.13.4 or later if you want to regenerate PHP parsers.
checking for gawk… gawk
./configure: line 3953: 1.: command not found
checking 2. Whether to enable the sample extension… yes, shared
./configure: line 4003: syntax error near unexpected token `then’
./configure: line 4003: ` 4. if test “$PHP_SAMPLE” != “no”; then’
jorgearr@compusis5 ~/Downloads/php-5.2.17/ext/sample $ make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
jorgearr@compusis5 ~/Downloads/php-5.2.17/ext/sample $

$tnx=’Thank you very much’;
echo $tnx;

Do you want to include a PHP file inside your extension and then return it’s instance?