README

Parallite PHP

Execute PHP closures in true parallel — native pcntl_fork with zero dependencies, no daemon, no binary, no serialization.

Features

True Parallel Execution — pcntl_fork runs closures in separate processes simultaneously
Zero Dependencies — only PHP 8.3+ with ext-pcntl and ext-posix (built-in)
No Daemon, No Binary — no external process to install, start, or manage
No Closure Serialization — forked processes inherit parent memory; closures run as-is
Simple async/await API — familiar Promise-like interface with global helpers
Promise Chaining — chainable then(), catch(), and finally() methods
Cross-platform — fork mode on Linux/macOS, automatic sequential fallback on Windows
Benchmark Mode — optional per-task metrics (execution time, memory, CPU)

Requirements

PHP 8.3+
ext-pcntl (Linux/macOS — built-in, enables fork mode)
ext-posix (Linux/macOS — built-in, enables fork mode)

Windows? Parallite works on Windows in sequential fallback mode (no pcntl_fork). Parallel execution requires a Unix-like OS.

Installation

composer require parallite/parallite-php

That's it. No binary to download, no daemon to start, no post-install scripts.

Quick Start

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Basic usage - no imports needed!
$result = await(async(fn() => 'Hello World'));
echo $result; // Hello World

// Parallel execution
$p1 = async(fn() => sleep(1) && 'Task 1');
$p2 = async(fn() => sleep(1) && 'Task 2');
$p3 = async(fn() => sleep(1) && 'Task 3');

$results = await([$p1, $p2, $p3]);
// Total time: ~1s (parallel) instead of 3s (sequential)

// Promise chaining
$result = await(
    async(fn() => 1 + 2)
        ->then(fn($n) => $n * 2)
        ->then(fn($n) => $n + 5)
);
echo $result; // 11

// Error handling
$result = await(
    async(function () {
        throw new Exception('Oops!');
    })->catch(fn($e) => 'Caught: ' . $e->getMessage())
);
echo $result; // Caught: Oops!

Documentation

Quick Start Guide — Get up and running in minutes
Installation — Requirements and setup
Configuration — Benchmark mode and PHP includes
API Reference — Complete API documentation
Complex Data Handling — How to handle complex data structures
Troubleshooting — Common issues and solutions
Examples — Real-world usage examples

Performance

Parallite provides significant speedup for I/O-bound and CPU-bound tasks:

Tasks	Sequential	Parallel	Speedup
3 × 1s	3.0s	~1.0s	3.0x
5 × 2s	10.0s	~2.0s	5.0x
10 × 1s	10.0s	~1.0s	10.0x

Parallelism is beneficial when:

✅ CPU-intensive operations (image processing, complex calculations)
✅ Independent I/O-bound operations (external API calls, multiple databases)
✅ Database with good concurrency (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL)
❌ SQLite with concurrent writes
❌ Operations are already very fast

Example using the Filamentphp demo

Project with + 20 thousand orders, simulating several heavy calculations and with json transformation, as if it were for a heavy dashbaord (when I have time, I'll add this demo project to git):

✅ With Parallite:

🚫 Without Parallite:

The increase was approximately 321.4% in orders processed per second.

Real-World Example

// Fetch multiple APIs in parallel
$promises = [
    'users' => async(fn() => file_get_contents('https://api.example.com/users')),
    'posts' => async(fn() => file_get_contents('https://api.example.com/posts')),
    'comments' => async(fn() => file_get_contents('https://api.example.com/comments')),
];

$data = await($promises);
// 3x faster than sequential fetching!

Platform Support

Platform	Status	Notes
Linux	✅ Fully Supported	Fork mode (parallel)
macOS	✅ Fully Supported	Fork mode (parallel)
Windows	⚠️ Sequential Mode	No `pcntl_fork` — runs closures sequentially

Troubleshooting

Having issues? Check the Troubleshooting Guide for solutions.

Quick tip: Use pd() inside async() calls — it throws an exception with the dump data.

How It Works

Parallite uses pcntl_fork() to create child processes that inherit the parent's entire memory space. This means:

No closure serialization — closures run directly in the forked process
No external daemon — each async() call forks immediately
No startup overhead — fork is near-instantaneous (~0.1ms)
Simple IPC — child writes result to a temp file, parent reads it on await()

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

Credits

Inspired by: Pokio

Support

Issues: GitHub Issues
Discussions: GitHub Discussions

Made with ❤️ by the Parallite community

parallite / parallite-php

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