(PHP 7 >= 7.4.0, PHP 8)
Objects of this class are created by the factory methods FFI::cdef(), FFI::load() or FFI::scope(). Defined C variables are made available as properties of the FFI instance, and defined C functions are made available as methods of the FFI instance. Declared C types can be used to create new C data structures using FFI::new() and FFI::type().
FFI definition parsing and shared library loading may take significant time. It is not useful
to do it on each HTTP request in a Web environment. However, it is possible to preload FFI definitions
and libraries at PHP startup, and to instantiate FFI objects when necessary. Header files
may be extended with special FFI_SCOPE defines (e.g. #define FFI_SCOPE "foo";
the default scope is "C") and then loaded by FFI::load() during preloading.
This leads to the creation of a persistent binding, that will be available to all the following
requests through FFI::scope().
Refer to the complete PHP/FFI/preloading example
for details.
It is possible to preload more than one C header file into the same scope.