All right, I finally started coding :) First of all, I must say I read the documentation, just in case you want to bash me on that..
I have questions about memory allocation, and documentation. 1) The documentation on writing extensions is not very "extensive". It tells you what is a zval, how to create one, how to get parameters, how to return parameters, and that's basically all. If you want to use the strength of the Zend engine to store stuff in hash so you can retrieve it later, you're doomed. Things like zend_list_insert, add_property_resource, zend_list_addref, are either not documented or just mentionned, without examples. The Appendix E of the documentation is totally obsolete, it references old functions that have been deprecated since PHP 4. Also, the manual, chapter 41 (Where to go from there) says "take time to study the header files and some modules [...] and the MySQL module [..]. The mysql module is one of the most complicated module! And reading the header files doesn't help, there is not a single comment there. I see macros, functions, that sound interesting, but I have no idea of what they do, how to call them, what memory they allocate, what are the pros and cons of using them, should I use them, etc.. 2) By reading the excellent modules 'ming' and 'domxml', I was able to understand how to create an object, give it elements, assign methods to the object, and make an instance of that object from my php test script, call its methods, and get returned values (woohoo!). However, i'm not sure about memory allocation, especially when it comes to adding stuff in the hash tables. This is kind of obscure, and not documented. What should I read to get more information about this? I'm planning to use the -DDEBUG option to check if everything is okay, but a document explaining those functions would be great. PS: for those interested, the extension is a PHP equivalent of the JEnscribe object for Java. It allows access to Enscribe files on a Himalaya system (ex Tandem Computer, ex Compaq, now HP...). Fab.
