flow-php/flow-php-ext

Flow PHP native extension (Rust) - Floe frame-body encoder/decoder for DataFrame Rows

1.x-dev 2026-07-12 12:18 UTC

Requires

• php: ~8.3.0 || ~8.4.0 || ~8.5.0

MIT

• extension
• serializer
• binary
• native
• rust
• DataFrame

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-07-12 12:18 UTC

Extension name: ext-flow_php

Supports Zend Thread Safety (ZTS): ✅

Supports non-Thread Safe mode (NTS): ✅

Supported operating systems: bsd, darwin, solaris, linux, unknown

README

A PHP extension written in Rust (ext-php-rs) providing native implementations for performance-critical parts of the Flow DataFrame framework. It encodes and decodes the frames of the Flow Floe binary format (.floe; the canonical PHP implementation lives in Flow\Floe in flow-php/etl). Flow\Floe\FloeReader/FloeWriter keep file header/footer assembly in PHP and delegate frame work to the extension:

$decoder = new Flow\Floe\RowsDecoder();
$decoder->schema($schemaFrameBody);
$row = $decoder->row($rowFrameBody);            // Flow\ETL\Row
$rows = $decoder->rows([$rowFrameBody, ...]);   // batched: Flow\ETL\Rows

$encoder = new Flow\Floe\RowsEncoder();
$encoder->schema($schemaFrameBody);
$rowFrameBody = $encoder->row($row);            // byte-identical to Flow\Floe\RowEncoder
$segments = $encoder->rows($rows);              // batched: framed ROW bytes per section,
                                                // list of Flow\Floe\FrameSegment

The extension is always optional: FloeReader/FloeWriter route to it automatically when flow_php is loaded, and behavior is identical with or without it. Extension errors surface as Flow\Floe\Exception\ExtensionException — there is no silent fallback. All 17 entry types are covered; xml/xml_element/html/html_element values delegate DOM (de)construction to the pure-PHP Flow\Floe\ValueDecoder/ValueEncoder static methods. Only DateTime/DateTimeImmutable are supported — datetime subclasses throw.

Build

nix-shell --arg with-rust true --run "cd src/extension/flow-php-ext && make build"

Test

nix-shell --arg with-rust true --run "cd src/extension/flow-php-ext && make test"