2021 – A Year In Review

Christian Lück Portrait Photo Simon Frings Portrait Photo Christian Lück & Simon Frings
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Another year has passed, so it’s time for our year in review! Let's take a look at the major achievement we've made with an entirely new Framework X, preparing ReactPHP for fibers and more. Happy new year to everybody and let’s dive right in for some of our highlights from 2021 and beyond! 🎉

Framework X

One of our most exciting projects in 2021 was by far the launch of Framework X! This idea has been around for a few years now, so we're super excited to finally pull this off.

  • The main idea was to make building modern, async PHP web applications much easier. This way, everyone can use ReactPHP's full potential without having to deal with all the low-level details.

  • In late April, we launched Framework X in a closed beta with only sponsors having access. We used this time to polish the project before releasing it to the public and get some early insights from people believing in our vision.

  • In November, we took the next step and launched our public beta. We used this state of the project to get in some early feedback and to help prioritize the next steps. We’re working on the project ever since and are more motivated than ever!

  • There are still a number of things we would like to address before launching the first stable version of Framework X. What would you like to see? Join the discussion!

Yes, naming is hard! We've discussed this in our team back and forth on how to call this project before publishing it. We've set out to use "Framework X" as a placeholder originally, but we've grown more accustomed to it ever since. I wonder what the future might hold…

ReactPHP

ReactPHP has evolved quite a lot in 2021!

  • In early 2021, the fibers RFC has been submitted for inclusion in PHP. After its first announcement, we quickly saw the potential and have started working on a plan to implement them into the ReactPHP ecosystem.

  • Throughout the first half of the year, we've done everything to make sure ReactPHP is ready for the inclusion of fibers. Therefore, we've gone through all our core components to get them ready to use an all-new default loop.

  • In July, we've celebrated ReactPHP's 9th birthday together with the launch of the new default loop! I think it's fair to say using ReactPHP has never been easier. See release announcement!

ReactPHP 9 years celebration

  • In the second half of the year, we've done a number of smaller changes that cleaned up and simplified ReactPHP's Socket and HTTP APIs, all while sticking to our BC promise.

  • In late November 2021 and after a lot of work, we were finally ready to welcome the new PHP 8.1 version. Just in time for this milestone, we've released our new async package as a development version to take advantage of fibers and coroutines from the get-go.

In total, we've published more than 25 releases for ReactPHP in 2021 alone. And just looking at these highlights, it's interesting to see how much all of this has helped shape ReactPHP!

clue·engineering

We're still a small team and as seen above, we’ve invested quite some time preparing everything for PHP 8.1 and the release of fibers. But there's more…

  • After discussing the consequences the fibers RFC has on the future of async PHP, we quickly realized the full potential but also noticed a lot of misunderstandings concerning the functionality and purpose of fibers. This is what got us to write our most successful blog post to date: Fibers in PHP: A new opportunity for async PHP?

  • Around midyear, we wrote a little something: 3212 words and 24256 characters later, we published our first ever written article for the German PHP Magazin: Transforming our knowledge into a single article was quite the experience. And even with these many pages, we feel we’re barely scratching the surface! Read here (German): Async PHP mit ReactPHP

  • At the end of the year 2021, our team member and friend Dennis left the company after two years to seek new adventures. We’re thankful for the amazing time we've had together and wish you all the luck in the world for the new challenges you’re going to face. Goodbye Dennis!

Looking forward

After looking back at what happened last year, let's talk about our plans for 2022:

  • Perhaps most importantly, we want to publish Framework X as a stable release as soon as possible. We already have a lot of new features and improvements on our list and we’re still deciding what needs to be in X to call it a stable version. If there’s anything you’d like to see, your suggestions are more than welcome!

  • Next to this, we're continuing our work on ReactPHP's new async package to bring fibers to the masses! We’re not too far from a stable version and our APIs are shaping up nicely.

  • Speaking of which: This year also marks ReactPHP's 10th anniversary! Feels like it's a good time to shape up ReactPHP for years to come!

  • Trying hard not to tease too much, but there are even more exciting projects coming up! This probably deserves its own blog post, so watch out, we'll keep you posted.

Thank you all for your support and cheers to an awesome 2022! 🥳

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