Where to Go from Here

You've learned a lot about PHP. You now know how to create dynamic loadable modules and statically linked extensions. You've learned how PHP and Zend deal with internal storage of variables and how you can create and access these variables. You know quite a set of tool functions that do a lot of routine tasks such as printing informational texts, automatically introducing variables to the symbol table, and so on.

Even though this chapter often had a mostly "referential" character, we hope that it gave you insight on how to start writing your own extensions. For the sake of space, we had to leave out a lot; we suggest that you take the time to study the header files and some modules (especially the ones in the ext/standard directory and the MySQL module, as these implement commonly known functionality). This will give you an idea of how other people have used the API functions - particularly those that didn't make it into this chapter.