PHPSci

Efficient PHP library for data scientists

PHPSci is a PHP Library for scientific computing powered by C. You must compile and install PHPSci CArray Extension.

It enables scientific operations in PHP to be performed up to 2000 times faster than current implementations.

http://phpsci.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Installation

You can install PHPSci using composer:

composer require phpsci/phpsci:dev-master

ATTENTION: You must install PHPSci extension, otherwise it won't work.

Performance

Orange PHP Blue PHPSci

PHP

(100,100): 0.036118984222412 sec
(200,200): 0.2786500453949 sec
(300,300): 0.96729803085327 sec
(400,400): 2.7810060977936 sec
(500,500): 5.2478280067444 sec
(600,600): 9.7698769569397 sec
(700,700): 14.908197879791 sec

PHPSci

(100,100): 0.002432107925415 sec
(200,200): 0.00038599967956543 sec
(300,300): 0.0011770725250244 sec
(400,400): 0.0022358894348145 sec
(500,500): 0.0036449432373047 sec
(600,600): 0.00559401512146 sec
(700,700): 0.0095341205596924 sec

Getting Started

PHPSci arrays are different from PHP arrays, they are called CArrays and work in a peculiar way. Let's look at the result of the print_r function in a PHP array and a twin CArray.

PHP Array

$a = [[1,2],[3,4]];
print_r($a);

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => 2
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 3
            [1] => 4
        )

)

PHPSci CArray

$a = PHPSci::fromArray([[1,2],[3,4]]);
print_r($a);

PHPSci\PHPSci Object
(
    [internal_pointer:protected] => PHPSci\Kernel\Orchestrator\MemoryPointer Object
        (
            [uuid:protected] => 1
            [x:protected] => 2
            [y:protected] => 2
            [carray_internal:protected] => CArray Object
                (
                    [uuid] => 1
                    [x] => 2
                    [y] => 2
                )

        )

)

This happens because print_r only works with PHP's natural functions, objects, and arrays, which is not the case for a CArray. An array of PHPSci is just a pointer to memory. It carries with it the position of memory where its data has been allocated.

The MemoryPointer object is a mirror of the CArray object, it carries with it the information needed to communicate with the C backend.

To view your data, you can use the echo method or transform your CArray into a PHP array.

Data Visualization

There are two ways to view your data in an PHPSci array:

Using echo

$a = PHPSci::fromArray([[1,2],[3,4]]);
echo $a;

[
  [ 1.000000  2.000000 ]
  [ 3.000000  4.000000 ]
]

Transforming into a PHP array

$a = PHPSci::fromArray([[1,2],[3,4]]);
print_r($a->toArray());

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => 2
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 3
            [1] => 4
        )

)

Try to perform all the necessary calculations before turning your PHPSci array into a PHP array.

The echo command is considerably more efficient than the toArray command. Try to use the toArray only when you want to use the results in a natively PHP function.

hoytluo/phpsci