Pux

Pux is a simple & fast PHP router.

Pux is 48.5x faster than symfony router in static route dispatching, 31x faster in regular expression dispatching. (with pux extension installed)

(Benchmark code and details here https://github.com/c9s/router-benchmark/blob/master/code)

Pux tries not to consume computation time to build all routes dynamically (like Symfony/Routing, although the RouteCompiler of Symfony/Routing caches the compiled patterns, but there are still a lot of function call and class loading from your application code. however, function calls are pretty slow in PHP).

Why It's Faster

• Pux uses simpler data structure (indexed array) to store the patterns and flags. (In PHP internals, zend_hash_index_find is faster than zend_hash_find).

• When matching routes, symfony uses a lot of function calls for each route:

  https://github.com/symfony/Routing/blob/master/Matcher/UrlMatcher.php#L124

  Pux fetches the pattern from an indexed-array:

  https://github.com/c9s/Pux/blob/master/src/Pux/Mux.php#L189

• Even you enabled APC or other bytecode cache extension, you are still calling methods and functions in the runtime. Pux reduces the route building to one static method call. __set_state.

• Pux separates static routes and dynamic routes automatically, Pux uses hash table to look up static routes without looping the whole route array.

• Pux\Mux is written in C extension, method calls are faster!

• With C extension, there is no class loading overhead.

• Pux compiles your routes to plain PHP array, the compiled routes can be loaded very fast. you don't need to call functions to register your routes before using it.

Why It's Here

Most of us use a lot of machines to run our applications, however, it uses too much energy and too many resources.

By using Pux, you can also decrease your expense of servers on cloud.

Also we believe that running softwares on slower machines should be easy as possible.

Some people thinks routing is not the bottleneck, the truth is this project does not claim routing is the bottleneck.

Actually the bottleneck is always different in different applications, if you have a lot of heavy db requests, then your bottleneck is your db; if you have a lot of complex computation, then the bottleneck should be your algorithm.

You might start wondering since the bottleneck is not routing, why do we implement route dispatcher in C extension? The answer is simple, if you put a pure PHP routing component with some empty callbacks and use apache benchmark tool to see how many requests you can handle per second, you will find out the routing component consumes a lot of computation time and the request number will decrease quite a few. (and it does nothing, all it does is ... just routing!)

So Pux reduces the overheads of loading PHP classes and the runtime method/function calls, and you can run your application faster without the overheads.

Features

• Zero dependency.
• Low memory footprint (only 6KB with simple routes and extension installed) .
• High performance of dispatching routes.
• PCRE pattern path support. (Sinatra-style syntax)
• Request method condition support.
• Domain condition support.
• HTTPS condition support.
• Controller auto-mounting - you mount a controller automatically without specifying paths for each action.
• Controller annotation support - you may override the default path from controller through the annotations.
• Route with optional pattern.

Pros & Cons of Grouped Pattern Matching Strategy

An idea of matching routes is to combine all patterns into one pattern and compare the given path with pcre_match in one time.

However this approach does not work if you have optional group or named capturing group, the pcre_match can not return detailed information about what pattern is matched if you use one of them.

And since you compile all patterns into one, you can't compare with other same patterns with different conditions, for example:

/users  # GET
/users  # POST
/users  # with HTTP_HOST=somedomain

The trade off in Pux is to compare routes in sequence because the same pattern might be in different HTTP method or different host name.

The best approach is to merge & compile the regexp patterns into a FSM (Finite state machine), complex conditions can also be merged into this FSM, and let this FSM to dispatch routes. And this is the long-term target of Pux.

Routing Path Format

Static route:

/post

PCRE route:

/post/:id                  => matches /post/33

PCRE route with optional pattern:

/post/:id(/:title)         => matches /post/33, /post/33/post%20title
/post/:id(\.:format)       => matches /post/33, /post/33.json .. /post/33.xml

Requirement

• PHP 5.4.x
• PHP 5.5.x

Installation

You can install Pux with composer by defining the following requirement in your composer.json:

{
    "require": {
        "corneltek/pux": "~1.5"
    }
}

Install Extension

To install pux extension to boost the performance:

git clone https://github.com/c9s/Pux.git
cd Pux/ext
phpize
./configure
make && make install

Or you can configure the optimization flag to gain more when running configure command.:

CFLAGS="-O3" ./configure

Then setup your php.ini config to load pux extension:

extension=pux.so

Synopsis

The routing usage is dead simple:

require 'vendor/autoload.php'; // use PCRE patterns you need Pux\PatternCompiler class.
use Pux\Executor;

class ProductController {
    public function listAction() {
        return 'product list';
    }
    public function itemAction($id) { 
        return "product $id";
    }
}
$mux = new Pux\Mux;
$mux->any('/product', ['ProductController','listAction']);
$mux->get('/product/:id', ['ProductController','itemAction'] , [
    'require' => [ 'id' => '\d+', ],
    'default' => [ 'id' => '1', ]
]);
$mux->post('/product/:id', ['ProductController','updateAction'] , [
    'require' => [ 'id' => '\d+', ],
    'default' => [ 'id' => '1', ]
]);
$mux->delete('/product/:id', ['ProductController','deleteAction'] , [
    'require' => [ 'id' => '\d+', ],
    'default' => [ 'id' => '1', ]
]);
$route = $mux->dispatch('/product/1');
Executor::execute($route);

Examples

Basic Example

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Pux\Mux;
use Pux\Executor;
$mux = new Mux;
$mux->get('/get', ['HelloController','helloAction']);
$mux->post('/post', ['HelloController','helloAction']);
$mux->put('/put', ['HelloController','helloAction']);

$mux->mount('/hello', new HelloController);

$route = $mux->dispatch( $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] );
echo Executor::execute($route);

Through Compiled Mux

Define your routing definition in routes.php:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Pux\Mux;
$mux = new Mux;
$mux->get('/get', ['HelloController','helloAction']);
return $mux;

Run pux command to compile your routing definition:

curl -O https://raw.github.com/c9s/Pux/master/pux
chmod +x pux
pux compile -o mux.php routes.php

Load the mux object from your application code:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$mux = require 'mux.php';
$route = $mux->dispatch( $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] );
echo Executor::execute($route);

Please note that if you need PCRE pattern support for route, you must load Pux/PatternCompiler.php before you use.

Mux

Mux is where you define your routes, and you can mount multiple mux to a parent one.

$mainMux = new Mux;
$mainMux->expand = true;

$pageMux = new Mux;
$pageMux->add('/page1', [ 'PageController', 'page1' ]);
$pageMux->add('/page2', [ 'PageController', 'page2' ]);

// short-hand syntax
$pageMux->add('/page2', 'PageController:page2'  );

$mainMux->mount('/sub', $pageMux);

foreach( ['/sub/page1', '/sub/page2'] as $p ) {
    $r = $mainMux->dispatch($p);
    ok($r, "Matched route for $p");
}

The expand option means whether to expand/merge submux routes to the parent mux.

When expand is enabled, it improves dispatch performance when you have a lot of sub mux to dispatch.

Methods

• Mux->add( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->post( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->get( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->put( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->any( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->delete( {path}, {callback array or callable object}, { route options })
• Mux->mount( {path}, {mux object}, { route options })
• Mux->length() returns length of routes.
• Mux->export() returns Mux constructor via __set_state static method in php code.
• Mux->dispatch({path}) dispatch path and return matched route.
• Mux->getRoutes() returns routes array.
• Mux::__set_state({object member array}) constructs and returns a Mux object.

Sorting routes

You need to sort routes when not using compiled routes, it's because pux sorts longer path to front:

$pageMux = new Mux;
$pageMux->add('/', [ 'PageController', 'page1' ]);
$pageMux->add('/pa', [ 'PageController', 'page1' ]);
$pageMux->add('/page', [ 'PageController', 'page1' ]);
$pageMux->sort();

This sorts routes to:

/page
/pa
/

So pux first compares /page, /pa, than /.

Different String Comparison Strategies

When expand is enabled, the pattern comparison strategy for strings will match the full string.

When expand is disabled, the pattern comparison strategy for strings will match the prefix.

APCDispatcher

Although Pux\Mux is already fast, you can still add APCDispatcher to boost the performance, which is to avoid re-lookup route.

This is pretty useful when you have a lot of PCRE routes.

use Pux\Dispatcher\APCDispatcher;
$dispatcher = new APCDispatcher($mux, array(
    'namespace' => 'app_',
    'expiry' => ...,
));
$route = $dispatcher->dispatch('/request/uri');
var_dump($route);

Persistent Dispatcher

Rather than reload the mux object from php file everytime (or load from APC), there still a lot of overhead.

Pux provides a persistent way to dispatch your route and keep the routes array in the persistent memory:

$r = pux_persistent_dispatch('hello', 'hello_mux.php', '/hello');

Please note that the hello_mux.php must be a compiled mux PHP file. The pux_persistent_dispatch is only available in extension.

NOTE: persistent dispatching is still in beta status.

Controller

Pux provides the ability to map your controller methods to paths automatically, done either through a simple, fast controller in the C extension or its pure PHP counterpart:

class ProductController extends \Pux\Controller
{
    // translate to path ""
    public function indexAction() { }

    // translate to path "/add"
    public function addAction() { }

    // translate to path "/del"
    public function delAction() { }
}

$mux = new Pux\Mux;
$submux = $controller->expand();
$mux->mount( '/product' , $submux );

// or even simpler
$mux->mount( '/product' , $controller);

$mux->dispatch('/product');       // ProductController->indexAction
$mux->dispatch('/product/add');   // ProductController->addAction
$mux->dispatch('/product/del');   // ProductController->delAction

You can also use @Route and @Method annotations to override the default \Pux\Controller::expand() functionality:

class ProductController extends \Pux\Controller
{
    /**
     * @Route("/all")
     * @Method("GET")
     */
    public function indexAction() {
        // now available via GET /all only
    }

    /**
     * @Route("/create")
     * @Method("POST")
     */
    public function addAction() {
        // now available via POST /create only
    }

    /**
     * @Route("/destroy")
     * @Method("DELETE")
     */
    public function delAction() {
        // now available via DELETE /destroy only
    }
}

This is especially helpful when you want to provide more specific or semantic (e.g., HTTP method-specific) actions. Note that by default, expanded controller routes will be available via any HTTP method - specifying @Method will restrict it to the provided method.

• Pux\Controller::expand() returns an instance of \Pux\Mux that contains the controller's methods mapped to URIs, intended to be mounted as a sub mux in another instance of \Pux\Mux.

Route Executor

Pux\Executor executes your route by creating the controller object, and calling the controller action method.

Route executor take the returned route as its parameter, you simply pass the route to executor the controller and get the execution result.

Here the simplest example of the usage:

use Pux\Executor;
$mux = new Pux\Mux;
$mux->any('/product/:id', ['ProductController','itemAction']);
$route = $mux->dispatch('/product/1');
$result = Executor::execute($route);

You can also define the arguments to the controller's constructor method:

class ProductController extends Pux\Controller {
    public function __construct($param1, $param2) {
        // do something you want
    }
    public function itemAction($id) {
        return "Product $id";
    }
}

use Pux\Executor;
$mux = new Pux\Mux;
$mux->any('/product/:id', ['ProductController','itemAction'], [ 
    'constructor_args' => [ 'param1', 'param2' ],
]);
$route = $mux->dispatch('/product/1');
$result = Executor::execute($route); // returns "Product 1"

MuxCompiler

In your route definition file hello_routes.php, you simply return the Mux