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    shmop_open

    (PHP 4 >= 4.0.4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    shmop_open — Create or open shared memory block

    Description

    shmop_open(
        int $key,
        string $mode,
        int $permissions,
        int $size
    ): Shmop|false

    shmop_open() can create or open a shared memory block.

    Parameters

    key

    System's id for the shared memory block. Can be passed as a decimal or hex.

    mode

    The flags that you can use:

    • "a" for access (sets SHM_RDONLY for shmat) use this flag when you need to open an existing shared memory segment for read only
    • "c" for create (sets IPC_CREATE) use this flag when you need to create a new shared memory segment or if a segment with the same key exists, try to open it for read and write
    • "w" for read & write access use this flag when you need to read and write to a shared memory segment, use this flag in most cases.
    • "n" create a new memory segment (sets IPC_CREATE|IPC_EXCL) use this flag when you want to create a new shared memory segment but if one already exists with the same flag, fail. This is useful for security purposes, using this you can prevent race condition exploits.

    permissions

    The permissions that you wish to assign to your memory segment, those are the same as permission for a file. Permissions need to be passed in octal form, like for example 0644

    size

    The size of the shared memory block you wish to create in bytes

    Note:

    Note: the 3rd and 4th should be entered as 0 if you are opening an existing memory segment.

    Return Values

    On success shmop_open() will return a Shmop instance that you can use to access the shared memory segment you've created. false is returned on failure.

    Errors/Exceptions

    If mode is invalid, or size is less than or equal to zero, a ValueError is thrown. On other failures, E_WARNING is emitted.

    Changelog

    Version Description
    8.0.0 On success, this function returns an Shmop instance now; previously, a resource was returned.
    8.0.0 If mode is invalid, or size is less than or equal to zero, a ValueError is thrown; previously E_WARNING was emitted instead, and the function returned false.

    Examples

    Example #1 Create a new shared memory block

    <?php
    $shm_key     = ftok(__FILE__, 't');
    $shm_id = shmop_open($shm_key, "c", 0644, 100);
    ?>

    This example opened a shared memory block with a system id returned by ftok().

    See Also

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    User Contributed Notes 9 notes

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    4
    kakkau at grr dot la
    8 years ago
    On *nix systems shmop_open is able to create an "infinite" amount of segments when setting $key = 0.

    After executing the following command twice in an interactive shell
    php > $res = shmop_open(0,"n",0600,1024);

    list the memory segments currently present
    $ ipcs -m

    ------ Shared Memory Segments --------
    key        shmid      owner      perms      bytes      nattch     status
    0x00000000 2293762    user       600        1024       0
    0x00000000 2326531    user       600        1024       0

    For any integer <> 0 in conjunction with the flag "n" shmop_open works like documented. It fails.
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    4
    daniele_dll at yahoo dot it
    20 years ago
    There is a little ftok function. This function isn't included into php for windows so i've grabbed it directly from linux glibc 2.3.2 source code. I hope that this can be useful.
    There is the code:

    <?php
    function ftok($pathname, $proj_id) {
            $st = @stat($pathname);
        if (!    $st) {
            return -    1;
        }
       
            $key = sprintf("%u", (($st['ino'] & 0xffff) | (($st['dev'] & 0xff) << 16) | (($proj_id & 0xff) << 24)));
        return     $key;
    }

    echo     ftok($_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"], 250);
    ?>

    sorry for my english :)
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    1
    Craig Manley
    19 years ago
    To: macmaster at pobox dot com:

    To clear up some new confusion: you said the shm key is 8 bytes long. As far as I know it's 4 bytes (32bits).
    Check out the output of ipcs on Linux below to see what I mean.

    ------ Shared Memory Segments --------
    key        shmid      owner      perms      bytes      nattch     status     
    0x6e6a694d 65538      mijnbel   644        65536      0                      
    0x326e794d 98307      mijnbel   644        65536      0                      
    0x62417347 131076     smsklap   644        65536      0
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    1
    thanks at forthefish dot com
    11 years ago
    These shared memory functions are kind of silly on Windows where sem_get() and friends nor any sort of synchronization object is available (as of PHP 5.5.5) to perform proper locking prior to access.  A core PHP dev needs to write some wrappers for sem_get() for Windows as they did for shmop to really round out this feature.

    The implementation of shmop for Windows is pretty slick - the author basically ported variations of POSIX functions to Windows equivalent prototypes.
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    1
    Chris Petersen
    21 years ago
    Be warned that if you try to shmop_open with a key set to zero, shmop_open will seemingly work, and you can write to it, but you will not be able to read from it or delete it.  If you're not careful, you can continue doing this - creating more and more shared memory blocks at "zero" until eventually you WILL start getting errors saying that php can't access or create the shared memory block, and you will have to restart your machine to free up all of those "zero" blocks.
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    1
    erelsgl at gmail dot com
    17 years ago
    === Checking if a shared memory exists ===
    The solution provided by Mitchell_Shnier at ieee dot orgZ doesn't work on my computer - I get a warning "Invalid flag ac".

    In order to check if a shared-memory exists, you just have to open it with the "a" or "w" flag, while hiding the warnings using the "@" operator:
    <?php
    @$shid = shmop_open($systemId, "a", 0666, 0);
    if (!empty(    $shid)) {
                ...     shared memory exists
    } else {
                ...     shared memory doesn't exist
    }
    ?>
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    1
    Filippo Fadda
    9 years ago
    I'm having the same issue affecting XP and described below, on Mac OS X Lion.

    To solve it, use before 'a' flag, then 'n'. Avoid 'c' flag.

    <?php
    $str     = 'Hello World';

    shm_key = ftok($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

    if (@    $shm_id = shmop_open($shm_key, 'a', 0644, 0))
          shmop_delete($shm_id);

    $shm_id = shmop_open($shm_key, 'n', 0644, strlen($str));

    if (    $shmId) {
          shmop_write($shmId, $str, 0);
          shmop_close($shmId);
    }
    else
      throw new     RuntimeException("Couldn't create shared memory segment.");
    ?>
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    0
    kakkau at grr dot la
    7 years ago
    One is not able to reconnect to a segment with key 0. For any other key (e.g. 1) the flags just work fine.

    php > $soid = shmop_open(0,"n",0600,10);
    php > $soid = shmop_open(0,"w",0600,10);
    PHP Warning:  shmop_open(): unable to attach or create shared memory segment 'Invalid argument' in php shell code on line 1
    PHP Stack trace:
    PHP   1. {main}() php shell code:0
    PHP   2. shmop_open(0, 'w', 384, 10) php shell code:1
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    -1
    Colin Paterson
    9 years ago
    If you are running your main script as say user "root" but need to open a Shared Memory Segment as another user (from your main script) such as say "www-data" then this works:

    exec("sudo -u www-data php -r 'shmop_open(0xee4, "c", 0770, 100);'"); //Create Shared Memory segment as USER www-data

    $SharedMemorySegment = shmop_open(0xee4, "c", 0770, 100);
            if (!$SharedMemorySegment) {
                echo "Couldn't create shared memory segment\n";
            }
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