PHP Fibers
summary
Claim: Fibers in PHP 8.1 let single-threaded code suspend and resume so async I/O looks synchronous. Demonstration builds a proof‑of‑concept framework: an event loop, non-blocking streams (stream_set_blocking(false)), socket readers, a URL fetcher that yields and resumes fibers, and a defer helper. Result: two-file download moves from 32 to 20 time units by overlapping waits, removing nested callbacks and making async code act like ordinary return/throw, at the cost of userland scheduling because fibers are cooperative not threads.
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chapters (22)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:47Fibers
- 7:06Reflection class
- 10:05Nesting
- 11:51How it works
- 14:47Task
- 15:24File Download
- 17:49File Download Graph
- 24:25Global Loop
- 28:50Fetcher
- 29:31Big Function
- 31:32Asynchronous
- 31:49Callback Hell
- 32:32Bring in the fibers
- 32:42FetchUrl
- 33:34defer
- 33:55refactor
- 34:59recap
- 37:47compare to generators
- 39:17fibers are not threads
- 42:59Questions
- 45:57Programmer control
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