Running PHP Applications
Running PHP Applications¶
When running PHP applications, edit the main config file to set the type
property to php and select the PHP version to use:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | # .symfony.cloud.yaml
# supported versions: 7.3, 7.4
# security-fix only versions: 7.2
# deprecated versions: 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1
type: "php:7.4"
|
PHP code is executed using PHP-FPM and, as of PHP 7.1, SymfonyCloud uses the Zend Thread Safe (ZTS) version of PHP.
PHP Extensions¶
PHP extensions can be enabled/disabled under the runtime.extensions and
runtime.disabled_extensions sections of the main config file:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | # .symfony.cloud.yaml
runtime:
extensions:
- http
- redis
- ssh2
disabled_extensions:
- sqlite3
|
Default PHP Extensions¶
The following extensions are enabled by default:
- bcmath
- bz2 (not in 7.0)
- calendar
- ctype
- curl
- date
- dba
- dom
- ereg (5.6 and earlier)
- exif
- fileinfo
- filter
- ftp
- gd
- gettext
- hash
- iconv
- intl
- json
- libxml
- mbstring
- mcrypt (5.6 and earlier)
- mhash (5.6 and earlier)
- mysql (5.6 and earlier)
- mysqli
- mysqlnd
- openssl
- pcntl
- pcre
- pdo
- pdo_mysql
- pdo_sqlite
- phar
- posix
- session
- shmop (5.6 and earlier)
- simplexml
- soap
- sockets
- sqlite3
- sysvmsg
- sysvsem
- sysvshm
- tokenizer
- wddx (5.6 and earlier)
- xml
- xmlreader
- xmlwriter
- zendopcache (5.4 only) / opcache (5.5 and later)
- zip
- zlib
Available PHP Extensions¶
This is the complete list of extensions supported by SymfonyCloud and the PHP versions where they can be enabled:
| Extension | 5.4 | 5.5 | 5.6 | 7.0 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.3 | 7.4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| amqp | ||||||||
| apc | ||||||||
| apcu | ||||||||
| apcu_bc | ||||||||
| applepay | ||||||||
| bcmath | ||||||||
| blackfire | ||||||||
| bz2 | ||||||||
| calendar | ||||||||
| ctype | ||||||||
| curl | ||||||||
| dba | ||||||||
| dom | ||||||||
| enchant | ||||||||
| event | ||||||||
| exif | ||||||||
| ffi | ||||||||
| fileinfo | ||||||||
| ftp | ||||||||
| gd | ||||||||
| gearman | ||||||||
| geoip | ||||||||
| gettext | ||||||||
| gmp | ||||||||
| http | ||||||||
| iconv | ||||||||
| igbinary | ||||||||
| imagick | ||||||||
| imap | ||||||||
| interbase | ||||||||
| intl | ||||||||
| ioncube | ||||||||
| json | ||||||||
| ldap | ||||||||
| mailparse | ||||||||
| mbstring | ||||||||
| mcrypt | ||||||||
| memcache | ||||||||
| memcached | ||||||||
| mongo | ||||||||
| mongodb | ||||||||
| msgpack | ||||||||
| mssql | ||||||||
| mysql | ||||||||
| mysqli | ||||||||
| mysqlnd | ||||||||
| newrelic | ||||||||
| oauth | ||||||||
| odbc | ||||||||
| opcache | ||||||||
| pdo | ||||||||
| pdo_dblib | ||||||||
| pdo_firebird | ||||||||
| pdo_mysql | ||||||||
| pdo_odbc | ||||||||
| pdo_pgsql | ||||||||
| pdo_sqlite | ||||||||
| pdo_sqlsrv | ||||||||
| pecl-http | ||||||||
| pgsql | ||||||||
| phar | ||||||||
| pinba | ||||||||
| posix | ||||||||
| propro | ||||||||
| pspell | ||||||||
| pthreads | ||||||||
| raphf | ||||||||
| readline | ||||||||
| recode | ||||||||
| redis | ||||||||
| shmop | ||||||||
| simplexml | ||||||||
| snmp | ||||||||
| soap | ||||||||
| sockets | ||||||||
| sodium | ||||||||
| sourceguardian | ||||||||
| spplus | ||||||||
| sqlite3 | ||||||||
| sqlsrv | ||||||||
| ssh2 | ||||||||
| sysvmsg | ||||||||
| sysvsem | ||||||||
| sysvshm | ||||||||
| tideways | ||||||||
| tideways_xhprof | ||||||||
| tidy | ||||||||
| tokenizer | ||||||||
| uuid | ||||||||
| wddx | ||||||||
| xcache | ||||||||
| xdebug | ||||||||
| xhprof | ||||||||
| xml | ||||||||
| xmlreader | ||||||||
| xmlrpc | ||||||||
| xmlwriter | ||||||||
| xsl | ||||||||
| yaml | ||||||||
| zbarcode | ||||||||
| zendopcache | ||||||||
| zip |
Note
Get the up-to-date complete list of extensions running this command after
you SSH into your environment: ls /etc/php/*/mods-available (for PHP 5
run ls /etc/php5/mods-available).
Note
Starting with PHP 7.4, the redis PECL extension is not longer included
because this library had several API breaks. Instead, we recommend the use
of the predis package which works across all supported PHP versions.
Custom PHP Extensions¶
You can also use a not-listed PHP extension by following these steps:
Download the
.sofile for the extension as part of your build hook usingcurlor similar.Note
Alternatively, if the file is not publicly downloadable, you can also build the extension in your build section (although this means rebuilding the same extension on every deployment) or add the file to your Git repository (although committing large binary blobs to Git is generally not recommended).
Edit your
php.inifile in the application root (as a sibling of your.symfony.cloud.yamlfile) that loads the extension using its absolute path:1 2
; php.ini extension=/app/myextension.so
Alternate Start Command¶
Although PHP runs using PHP-FPM by default, you can also start alternative
processes if desired, such as if you're running an Async PHP daemon, a
thread-based worker process, etc. To do so, define an alternative start
command in the main config file:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | # .symfony.cloud.yaml
web:
commands:
start: 'php run.php'
upstream:
socket_family: tcp
protocol: http
|
The above configuration will execute the run.php script in the application
root when the container starts, but will not launch PHP-FPM. It will also tell
the front-controller (Nginx) to connect to your application via a TCP socket,
which will be specified in the PORT environment variable. Note that the
start command must run in the foreground.
Note
Note that PHP-FPM cannot run simultaneously along with another persistent process (such as ReactPHP or Amp). If you need both they will have to run in separate containers.
PHP Worker Sizing Hints¶
The number of workers of a PHP runtime is set automatically and can be checked by running the following command:
1 2 | $ symfony ssh -- find /etc/php -name php-fpm.conf -exec grep -e '^pm.max_children' {} \;
pm.max_children = 2
|
SymfonyCloud uses the following formula to calculate the number of workers:
1 2 3 | / Container Memory - Reserved Request Memory \
workers = max| ------------------------------------------- , 2 |
\ Average Request Memory /
|
- Container Memory
- The total memory available for the container, which depends on the size of the container.
- Average Request Memory
- The memory that an average request is expected to require. Default value: 45 MB.
- Reserved Request Memory
- The memory that should be reserved for things that are not specific to a request (memory for nginx, the op-code cache, some OS page cache, etc.) Default value: 70 MB.
You can tweak the default values if your application will typically consume more memory or if your application container is swapping a lot. To do so, set the following options in the main config file:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | # .symfony.cloud.yaml
runtime:
sizing_hints:
# values are considered megabytes
request_memory: 10
reserved_memory: 70
|
The request_memory value must be 1 MB or higher and the reserved_memory
value must be 70 MB or higher.
Measuring PHP Worker Memory Usage¶
To see how much memory your PHP worker processes are using, look at the PHP access log:
1 | $ symfony log php.access
|
In the fifth column, you'll see the peak memory usage that occurred while each request was handled. A good way to determine an optimal request memory is with the following command:
1 | $ tail -n5000 /var/log/php.access.log | awk '{print $6}' | sort -n | uniq -c
|
This will print out a table of how many requests used how much memory, in KB, for the last 5,000 requests that reached PHP-FPM (increase that number if your site has lot of traffic). As an example, consider the following output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | 4800 2048
948 4096
785 6144
584 8192
889 10240
492 12288
196 14336
68 16384
2 18432
1 22528
6 131072
|
This indicates that the majority of requests (4800) used 2048 KB of memory. In this case that's likely application caching at work. Most requests used up to around 10 MB of memory, while a few used as much as 18 MB and a very few (6 requests) peaked at 131 MB.
A conservative approach would suggest an average request memory of 16 MB should be sufficient. A more aggressive stance would suggest 10 MB. The more aggressive approach would potentially allow for more concurrent requests at the risk of some requests needing to use swap memory, thus slowing them down.
Note
If you are running PHP 5.x then don't bother adjusting the worker memory usage until you upgrade to PHP 7.x. PHP 7 is way more memory efficient and you will likely need less than half as much memory per process with PHP7.
PHP Configuration¶
There are three ways to customize php.ini values for your application.
Option 1. Create a file called php.ini in the root directory of the
application. This is the recommended method:
1 2 | ; php.ini
memory_limit = 256M
|
Option 2. Use the variables.php property of the main config file:
1 2 3 4 | # .symfony.cloud.yaml
variables:
php:
memory_limit: 256M
|
Option 3. Define the values as env vars for some specific environment. This method is mostly useful on development environments to enable error outputting, enable the Xdebug extension, etc.:
1 | $ symfony var:set php:memory_limit=256M
|
Settings defined as environment variables have precedence over the ones defined
in .symfony.cloud.yaml, which has precedence over the ones defined in
php.ini.
Error Handling¶
By default, display_errors is set to On to ease setting up your project.
We strongly recommend providing a custom error handler in your application or
setting this value to Off before you make your site live and this is done
automatically for you during initial configuration using the project:init
command:
- INI
1 2
; php.ini display_errors=Off
- YAML
1 2 3 4
# .symfony.cloud.yaml variables: php: display_errors: Off
PHP Timezone¶
You can change the timezone of the PHP runtime with the following configuration:
- INI
1 2
; php.ini date.timezone="Europe/Paris
- YAML
1 2 3 4
# .symfony.cloud.yaml variables: php: "date.timezone": "Europe/Paris"
Check out the main Timezone article to learn more about setting the timezone of other services.
Runtime configuration¶
In addition to PHP Configuration, SymfonyCloud also lets you configure the
PHP-FPM runtime via the runtime section on the .symfony.cloud.yaml file.
The following options are configurable:
request_terminate_timeout: The timeout for serving a single request after which the PHP-FPM worker process will be killed. This option should be used when themax_execution_timeini option does not stop script execution for some reason.1 2 3
# .symfony.cloud.yaml runtime: request_terminate_timeout: 300
sizing_hints: Hints given to SymfonyCloud to compute the optimal number of workers serving HTTP requests. See PHP Worker Sizing Hints for more information.1 2 3 4 5 6
# .symfony.cloud.yaml runtime: sizing_hints: # values are considered megabytes request_memory: 10 reserved_memory: 70
Debug PHP-FPM¶
Use the env:fpm:status command to inspect what's going on with PHP-FPM:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | $ symfony env:fpm:status
pool: web
process manager: ondemand
start time: 10/Jan/2019:08:55:43 +0000
start since: 365469
accepted conn: 17329
listen queue: 0
max listen queue: 0
listen queue len: 0
idle processes: 0
active processes: 1
total processes: 1
max active processes: 2
max children reached: 102
slow requests: 0
************************
pid: 20216
state: Running
start time: 14/Jan/2019:14:26:14 +0000
start since: 38
requests: 3
request duration: 155
request method: GET
request URI: /-/status?&full
content length: 0
user: -
script: -
last request cpu: 0.00
last request memory: 0
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This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.