The SitePoint PHP blog has posted an introductory tutorial helping you get started with extension development with Zephir, a language that aims to make extension development easy and fast.

This tutorial will explain how to create a PHP extension using a new language: Zephir, which is similar to C and Fortran. You can download the full source code from github. We’ve touched on the concept of Zephir before, so if you’re interested in getting a broad overview, see our previous articles. Zephir can be looked at as a hybrid language that lets you write code that looks like PHP, but is then compiled to native C, meaning you can create an extension from it and come away with very efficient code.

He starts with a list of dependencies you'll need to get an extension compiled and working with Zephir including the gcc compiler and json-c. He shows you how to install Zephir from Github and update your path to make the executable available. As his example extension, he creates a tool that can calculate the result for the time-dependent Schrödinger equation (don't worry, the complete Zephir code for the extension is included in the tutorial). He includes the commands to initialize the Zephir project, code for the various classes involved and the expected output from the compilation. Finally, he includes a bit of PHP code to test out the newly built extension and its output.