Building PHP Extensions in Go: A Practical Framework Integration Guide

Freek Van der Herten explores a conference session on writing PHP extensions using Go and FrankenPHP, then integrating them into Laravel and Symfony. The talk uses an in-memory LRU cache as a worked example to demonstrate PHP internals and framework interoperability.

This piece covers a practical conference session from phpconference.nl on an emerging technique: building PHP extensions using Go, leveraging FrankenPHP as the bridge, and wiring the resulting extensions into Laravel and Symfony applications as native features.

The example used throughout is an in-memory LRU cache implementation, chosen to illustrate both the mechanics of extension development and the flexibility points within modern PHP frameworks. By working through a concrete, performance-relevant use case, the session demonstrates how Go's efficiency and concurrency model can be harnessed to accelerate PHP workloads at the extension level.

The material touches on PHP internals knowledge needed to interface with the Zend Engine, the interoperability patterns that allow Go-built modules to behave seamlessly within Laravel and Symfony, and the practical setup required to compile and deploy such extensions.