Middleware in PHP: Compiling It With elephc, Then Not Needing To

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 20:50:00 -0700

ePHPm middleware runs before PHP. It’s a small versioned C ABI, loaded with dlopen, that gets to look at a request and reject it before PHP boots or the request body is read. That’s the right shape for a gateway. It’s the wrong shape for most PHP shops, who want to write their middleware in PHP. This is the story of compiling PHP into a native .so to fit that ABI and finding exactly where it broke. Then I built the lane that should have existed in the first place.

Middleware on Luther Monson

Middleware in PHP: Compiling It With elephc, Then Not Needing To