Re: simple c fcgi client to talk to fastcgi process?

Le Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 11:52:48PM +1000, smullen écrivait/wrote:
> Hi, I'm getting my head around fcgi and come up against a brick wall.
>  
>  
> I have fastCGIphp running on a socket ( i.e. php -b /tmp/fastcgi.sock) and
> would like to "talk to it" directly in c and get a response.
> 
> In other words, send a simple "<?phpinfo();?>" (or script_filename) and get
> the reply.

You'll need to implement the whole FastCGI client protocol
stack. There is no library for this (the usual fastcgi libraries are
for fastcgi applications, which are FastCGI servers!).

I see other alternatives

0. As mentioned above, code your FastCGI protocol stack in C, you
probably take some code fragments from some existing FastCGI
implementation in HTTP servers like mod_fcgi from Apache or
mod_fastcgi.c from Lighttpd) but be sure to respect the code
licence...

1. switch to some simpler protocol, like SCGI (this is what I did),
which is less flexible that SCGI but simpler. I don't know if there is
a SCGI interface within PHP5 (like there is FCGI for PHP), i.e. a way
to run PHP interpreters as SCGI servers. (However, i you can switch to
Ruby Rails instead of PHP, there is SCGI for Ruby!). You might perhaps
use other protocols like ICAP but they are not suited for this task...

2. most simple: use the HTTP protocol (there are several HTTP client
libraries in C, for example CURL) and have, as usual, an HTTP server
between your FastCGI/PHP and your C codeapplication. Eventually, you
might run a smaller FastCGI capable HTTP server for this only purpose
-because a FastCGI server can definitely have several clients, ie
several HTTP servers using it-, and accepting connextions only locally
(or on the local network). For example, you could run lighttpd
configured on port 8082 to accept only localhost connections - from
your C program.

The hardest to implement choice is 0, then maybe 1, then 2 which is
easy.

The most performant choice (but does performance really matters when
using PHP?) is choice 0, then choice 1, then choice 2...


-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ 
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net 
aliases: basile<at>tunes<dot>org = bstarynk<at>nerim<dot>net
8, rue de la Faïencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
___________________________________
fastcgi-developers mailing list
http://fastcgi.com/fastcgi-developers/