Quickstart guide for a PHP application

Install Wasmer

Click here for instructions on how to install Wasmer if you haven't done it already!

Log in into Wasmer

Create a new account in Wasmer (opens in a new tab). Then, log in into the Wasmer CLI and follow the provided steps to provide the CLI access to your Wasmer account.

wasmer login

Deploy!

We begin creating a new empty directory.

mkdir my-new-php-app
cd my-new-php-app

Then, running a single command, we can setup a php application.

wasmer deploy --template=php-starter

This will prompt you for the following:

• App owner: This is the owner of the app. It can be your username or an organization; if you're logged in, the command will prompt you tochoose from your namespaces: by default, it will be your username.
• App name: This is the name of your app. By default, it will be the name of the current directory.

Expect to see output similar to this:

It seems you are trying to create a new app!
✔ Who should own this app? · wasmer-user
✔ What should be the name of the app? · php-starter
✔ Select the directory to save the app in · php-starter
✔ Unpacked template
✔ Do you want to deploy the app now? · yes
Loading local package (manifest path: php-starter/.)
✔ Correctly built package locally
✔ Package correctly uploaded
✔ Succesfully pushed release to namespace wasmer-user on the registry
Deploying app php-starter (wasmer-user) to Wasmer Edge...
 
App php-starter (wasmer-user) was successfully deployed 🚀
https://php-starter-wasmer-user.wasmer.app
 
→ Unique URL: https://2e5h6i7cd9ql.id.wasmer.app
→ Dashboard:  https://wasmer.io/apps/wasmer-user/php-starter
 
Waiting for new deployment to become available...
(You can safely stop waiting now with CTRL-C)
.
𖥔 Deployment complete

Your directory should now look like this:

Let's check it:

curl https://php-starter-wasmer-user.wasmer.app

Expect output similar to this:

1       =>      PHP code tester Sandbox Online
emoji   =>      😀 😃 😄 😁 😆
2       =>      5
5       =>      89009
Random number   =>      630
PHP Version     =>      8.3.4

Update the app

To illustrate the lifecycle of an app, let's edit the index.php file in the app folder:

<?php 
  echo 'Hello World!';   
  var_dump($_SERVER); 
?>

Now, simply run wasmer deploy again:

wasmer deploy

Let's check it again:

curl https://php-starter-wasmer-user.wasmer.app

Expect to see:

Hello World!array(19) {
  ...
}

Testing your PHP application locally

To test your PHP application locally simply run

wasmer run .

Let's try to cURL the server:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8080

Expect to see:

Hello World!array(19) {
  ...
}

Custom PHP settings

PHP in Wasmer Edge is using the PHP development CLI, so we can assure maximum compatibility. Because of that, we want to showcase how you can make your app ready for production workloads.

scaling.mode in app.yaml

If you check the app.yaml file, you will see the setting scaling.mode (opens in a new tab):

scaling:
  mode: single_concurrency

scaling.mode: single_concurrency specifies to Wasmer Edge that each command only has one worker per thread, so Wasmer Edge can scale them accordingly. See scaling.mode docs.

php.ini settings.

You can customize the PHP settings with a custom php.ini. Create a config/php.ini inside of your folder, and use the following settings:

opcache.validate_timestamps = 0
opcache.file_update_protection = 0
opcache.max_file_size = 0
 
upload_max_filesize = "20M"
post_max_size = "25M"

Now, copy the config directory inside of the filesystem (fs) in wasmer.toml, and set the environment variable PHPRC

[fs]
# ...
"/config" = "config"
 
[[command]]
name = "run"
module = "php/php:php"
runner = "wasi"
 
[command.annotations.wasi]
main-args = ["-t", "/app", "-S", "localhost:8080"]
env = ["PHPRC=/config/"] # this indicates PHP where to look for php.ini

Instaboot

If you want to accelerate the cold-start times of your PHP app (for example, if you are using Symfony or Laravel with tons of PHP imports), Instaboot can help to speed up cold-starts by 100-200x.

capabilities:
  instaboot:
    # We provide a list of HTTP requests that will be used to pre-warm the
    # application.
    requests:
      # Load the homepage
      - path: /

Learn more about Instaboot in our docs.