Install gRPC for PHP

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gRPC is a modern, open-source, high-performance remote procedure call framework. If you want to use PHP client libraries for gRPC-enabled APIs, you must install gRPC for PHP. This tutorial explains how to install and enable gRPC.

Objectives

  • Install the gRPC extension for PHP.
  • Enable the gRPC extension for PHP.

Requirements

  • PHP 7.0 or later
  • PECL (unless you build from source)
  • Composer

Installing PECL

Ubuntu / Debian 

sudo apt-get install autoconf zlib1g-dev php-dev php-pear

If using PHP 7.4+, PHP must have been installed with the --with-pear flag.

CentOS / RHEL 7 

 sudo rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
 sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm
 sudo yum install php-devel php-pear gcc zlib-devel

macOS 

 curl -O https://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar
 sudo php -d detect_unicode=0 go-pear.phar

Windows

Windows does not require PECL.

Installing Composer

Linux 

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

macOS 

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Windows

Follow the official Composer installation instructions for Windows.

Installing the gRPC extension

Using PECL 

sudo pecl install grpc

This compiles and installs the gRPC PHP extension into the standard PHP extension directory.

Build from source

Follow these instructions to compile the gRPC core library and PHP extension from source.

  1. Clone the gRPC repository from GitHub.

    git clone https://github.com/grpc/grpc

  2. Build and install the gRPC C core library.

    cd grpc
git submodule update --init
make
sudo make install

It can take a few minutes to download and execute the library.
If you have git version 1.8.4 or greater, you can speed up
the `git submodule update --init` command by adding the `--depth=1`
flag.

  3. Compile the gRPC PHP extension.

    cd src/php/ext/grpc
phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install

Windows

Windows users can download the pre-compiled gRPC directly from the PECL website.

Read the PHP documentation for installing extensions on Windows.

Enable the gRPC extension in php.ini

Linux / macOS

Add this line anywhere in your php.ini file, for example, /etc/php7/cli/php.ini. You can find this file by running php --ini.

extension=grpc.so

Windows

Add this line anywhere in your php.ini file, for example, C:\Program Files\PHP\7.3\php.ini.

extension=php_grpc.dll

Add gRPC as a Composer dependency

Use Composer to add the grpc/grpc package to your PHP project:

composer require "grpc/grpc:^1.38"

Installing the protobuf runtime library

You can choose from two protobuf runtime libraries. The APIs they offer are identical. The C implementation performs better than the PHP (native) implementation, while the native implementation installs easier than the C implementation.

C implementation

For better performance with gRPC, enable the protobuf C-extension.

Linux / macOS

Install the protobuf.so extension by using PECL.

sudo pecl install protobuf

Now add this line to your php.ini file, for example, /etc/php5/cli/php.ini.

extension=protobuf.so

Windows

Download the pre-compiled protobuf extension directly from the PECL website.

Now add this line to your php.ini file, for example, C:\Program Files\PHP\7.3\php.ini.

extension=php_protobuf.dll

PHP implementation

For easier installation, require the google/protobuf package by using Composer.

composer require "google/protobuf:^3.17"

What's next

Now that you've installed gRPC and the gRPC PHP extension, try out gRPC-enabled APIs such as Cloud Spanner.