declare(ticks=1);

class DaemonRunner {
    public static function exec($className) {
        $argv = $_SERVER['argv'];
        $daemon = new $className($argv);
        $daemon->init();
        while (!$daemon->isDone()) {
            $daemon->run();
        }
        $daemon->shutdown();
    }
}

The first statement is a PHPism. This allows PHP to check for signals every 1 tick. A tick is simply a low-level PHP interpreter step. The way I’ve setup my daemon and signal handling by default, the PHP will finish its current iteration and then quit when receiving a signal. This ensures that the database, and whatever background stuff aren’t left in inconsistent states. As with anything, you’re free to modify, extend, or otherwise alter this behavior.

great for background/async processing of:

• photos
• movies
• reports
• imports of data

advantages:

• use the same codebase as your app
• use the same expertise on your team of programmers

challenges:

• signals
• one thread
• memory (this will have to be a whole separate article)
• starting and stopping

A typical Daemon class I use:

abstract class Daemon {
    protected $done = false;

    public function __construct($argv) {
    }
    public function init() {
        pnctl_signal(SIGTERM, array($this, "onSignal"));
        pnctl_signal(SIGINT, array($this, "onSignal"));

    }
    abstract public function run();
    public function shutdown() {}
    public function isDone() {
        return $this->done;
    }
    public onSignal($signal){
        switch ($signal) {
             case SIGTERM:
             case SIGINT:
                $this->done = true;
                 break;
             default:
                 // handle all other signals
        }
    }
}

As you can see, we’ve started to tackle some of the challenges here. The idea is to handle signals, specifically I usually care about SIGTERM (default when using ‘kill’ on *nix) and SIGINT (from pressing Ctrl-C). Both will cause the program to exit gracefully.

I’ll be posting the class I use to run Daemon’s tomorrow.