Running PHP programs with HHVM

Hello World

First, create hello.php:

<?php echo 'Hello from Hiphop'; ?>

Here's how to run a PHP program at the command line:

hhvm hello.php

Next, run hhvm as a server (if you installed from source it is in hphp/hhvm/hhvm):

sudo hhvm -m server

And it is that easy:

curl localhost/hello.php

Set port number

If you want to set a port number, add -p option as below.

hhvm -m server -p 8000

Configuring HHVM

If you need to change any of HHVM's default settings (which you probably will), you'll want to create a config.hdf file. See the documentation for possible options. When you run HHVM, you can point it at your config file like so:

hphp/hhvm/hhvm -c config.hdf <additional arguments>

Using RepoAuthoritative mode

To get some more performance (10% - 25%) out of your scripts, you can use RepoAuthoritative mode. Note that RepoAuthoritative mode does not support eval(), and it is not recommended unless you really need that last additional bit of performance in a production environment.

Using RepoAuthoritative mode requires doing a "build" step to produce a bytecode archive in advance. If you have PHP files file1.php and file2.php, you can build a bytecode archive named hhvm.hhbc by executing this command:

hhvm --hphp -thhbc -o some_dir file1.php file2.php

Now you will have a pre-compiled archive file named some_dir/hhvm.hhbc. The file hhvm.hhbc is actually an sqlite database file - you can even view the structure of the file using sqlite. This is similar to a java .jar or a python .par file. It is a stand-alone version of your scripts. To run the program file1.php, use this command:

hhvm -vRepo.Authoritative=true -vRepo.Central.Path=some_dir/hhvm.hhbc file1.php

To run the program file2.php, use this command:

hhvm -vRepo.Authoritative=true -vRepo.Central.Path=some_dir/hhvm.hhbc file2.php

Note: If you get the error message Unable to find/load systemlib.php, make sure you are pointing at the hhvm.hhbc file and not the directory.