php_clickhouse

Native PHP extension for ClickHouse, built on the official ClickHouse/clickhouse-cpp v2.6.2 client. Speaks the native binary TCP protocol with LZ4 / ZSTD compression and optional TLS, picking up where SeasX/SeasClick left off in 2020. 30-40% faster than HTTP-based clients on heavy workloads, with modern types (Date32, Time64, Decimal128, LowCardinality, Map, JSON), multi-endpoint failover, and structured exceptions.

📖 Documentation

Full usage guide, data-type read/write reference, and configuration: iliaal.github.io/php_clickhouse

The docs site covers every supported type (what insert() accepts and what select() returns), fetch_mode flags, CSV/TSV streaming, placeholders, settings, observability, and the complete method list. This README is the quick start.

Why this fork?

SeasX/SeasClick was the canonical native PHP ClickHouse extension and stopped accepting PRs in 2020. Several follow-up PRs there have been pending for years. This fork:

• Renames the extension to php_clickhouse (module clickhouse, classes ClickHouse / ClickHouseException)
• Upgrades the vendored client from artpaul-fork v1.x to the official ClickHouse/clickhouse-cpp v2.6.2
• Adds Date32 / Time / Time64 / DateTime64 / Int128 / UInt128 / Decimal128 / LowCardinality / Map / JSON column types, multi-endpoint failover, ZSTD compression, query_id propagation, and TLS
• Ships an updated test suite, CI, PIE-based packaging, and benchmarks

The original SeasClick and SeasClickException class names continue to work as deprecated aliases. Method signatures, return types, and class properties are declared with PHP types via a stub-driven arginfo workflow, so reflection, IDE completion, and static analyzers see the typed surface.

🚀 Install

Via PIE (the PHP Foundation's PECL successor):

pie install iliaal/php_clickhouse

With TLS support:

pie install iliaal/php_clickhouse --enable-clickhouse-openssl

Bare php:X.Y-cli Docker images lack /usr/bin/unzip, which composer needs to extract PIE's prebuilt .so zip. Run apt-get install -y unzip before pie install, otherwise composer falls back to PHP's ZipArchive and PIE fails with ExtensionBinaryNotFound. Host installs that already have unzip are fine.

Building from source:

git clone https://github.com/iliaal/php_clickhouse.git
cd php_clickhouse
phpize
./configure                              # default build
./configure --enable-clickhouse-openssl  # with TLS, requires OpenSSL development headers
                                         #   (libssl-dev on Debian/Ubuntu, openssl-devel
                                         #    on RHEL/Fedora, openssl-dev on Alpine)
make && sudo make install

Add extension=clickhouse.so to your php.ini. The build needs a C++17-capable compiler (GCC 8+, Clang 7+, MSVC 2019+); LZ4, ZSTD, abseil-int128, and CityHash are vendored under lib/clickhouse-cpp/contrib/.

Platforms

Platform	Status	Notes
Linux NTS	first-class	PHP 7.4 through 8.5, CI matrix
Linux ZTS	first-class	PHP 8.4 ZTS in CI
Windows (NTS, TS)	supported	PHP 8.4 x86 / x64 in CI; pre-built .dll released via PIE
macOS	unverified	should build (POSIX path); no CI lane

Per-Client state lives on the zend_object itself (custom create_object / free_obj handlers), so ZTS works without locking. There is no module-global state to thread-isolate.

Test server

For development and integration tests, the simplest path is the official ClickHouse server image:

docker run -d --name clickhouse-test \
    --ulimit nofile=262144:262144 \
    -p 9000:9000 -p 8123:8123 -p 9440:9440 \
    -e CLICKHOUSE_USER=test \
    -e CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD=test \
    clickhouse/clickhouse-server:latest

Stop and clean up: docker rm -f clickhouse-test.

🛠️ Quick example

<?php
$ch = new ClickHouse([
    "host"        => "127.0.0.1",
    "port"        => 9000,
    "database"    => "test",
    "user"        => "default",
    "passwd"      => "",
    "compression" => "lz4",   // or "zstd" / true / false
]);

$ch->execute("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS events (
    id UInt32, ts DateTime64(3), tag LowCardinality(String)
) ENGINE = Memory");

$ch->insert("events", ["id", "ts", "tag"], [
    [1, time(), "alpha"],
    [2, time(), "beta"],
]);

foreach ($ch->select("SELECT id, ts, tag FROM events ORDER BY id",
                     [], ClickHouse::DATE_AS_STRINGS) as $row) {
    print_r($row);
}

Configuration keys, the full method list, per-type read/write rules, placeholders, settings, streaming, and observability all live in the documentation site.

📊 Benchmarks

PHP 8.4.22 / ClickHouse 26.3.9.8 / localhost loopback / Memory table (no disk).

Compared against smi2/phpClickHouse, the most popular pure-PHP HTTP client. Each cell is total wall-clock seconds for selectCount queries plus a single bulk insert of dataCount rows.

dataCount × selectCount × limit	phpClickHouse (HTTP)	php_clickhouse (uncompressed)	php_clickhouse (LZ4)	php_clickhouse (ZSTD)
10000 × 1 × 5000	0.112	0.085	0.074	0.023
10000 × 1 × 5000	0.104	0.030	0.024	0.081
10000 × 100 × 5000	0.298	0.263	0.209	0.218
10000 × 100 × 10000	0.303	0.210	0.265	0.215
1000 × 200 × 500	0.558	0.416	0.415	0.413
1000 × 200 × 1000	0.611	0.408	0.410	0.395
1000 × 500 × 500	1.428	1.063	0.976	0.982
1000 × 500 × 1000	1.383	0.959	1.025	1.030
1000 × 800 × 500	2.477	1.533	1.569	1.543
1000 × 800 × 1000	2.498	1.588	1.563	1.519

At high select counts the native binary protocol runs 30-40% faster than the HTTP client. On small bursts (dataCount=10000, selectCount=1), php_clickhouse with ZSTD or LZ4 is fastest. To reproduce, see bench/.

🔗 Native PHP extensions

Companion native PHP extensions:

• php_excel: native Excel I/O via LibXL. 7-10× faster than PhpSpreadsheet, full XLS/XLSX with formulas, formatting, and styling.
• mdparser: native CommonMark + GFM markdown parser via md4c. 15-30× faster than pure-PHP libraries.
• pdo_duckdb: PDO driver for DuckDB, analytical SQL in your PHP stack.
• fastjson: drop-in faster ext/json, backed by yyjson. 6× encode, 2.7× decode, 5× validate.
• phpser: decoder-optimized binary serializer for cache workloads. Faster than igbinary on packed numerics and DTO batches.
• fast_uuid: high-throughput UUID generation (v1/v4/v7), batched CSPRNG and SIMD hex formatter, ramsey-compatible API.
• fastchart: native chart-rendering extension. 38 chart types behind one fluent OO API, SVG-canonical with PNG/JPG/WebP and optional PDF output.
• statgrab: system statistics (CPU, memory, disk, network) via libstatgrab, no parsing /proc by hand.
• phonetic: native phonetic name matching (Double Metaphone, Beider-Morse, Daitch-Mokotoff, NYSIIS, Match Rating), the encoders PHP core lacks.

📚 Read more

Full background, fork rationale, and benchmark methodology in the launch post: php_clickhouse: A Native ClickHouse Client for PHP, Picking Up Where SeasClick Left Off.

License

The PHP-side wrapper is licensed under PHP-3.01.

The vendored client library at lib/clickhouse-cpp/ is ClickHouse/clickhouse-cpp, licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

The vendored compression libraries (lib/clickhouse-cpp/contrib/lz4/, contrib/zstd/, contrib/cityhash/) carry BSD-style licenses; abseil int128 (contrib/absl/) is Apache 2.0. See each subdirectory for the exact text.

Credits

php_clickhouse started as a fork of SeasX/SeasClick by SeasX Group (ahhhh.wang@gmail.com). The original PR-4 work to add fetch modes landed in 2019 and the upstream maintainer hasn't accepted external PRs since. Independent re-vendoring, port to clickhouse-cpp v2.6.2, new types, TLS, and packaging are by Ilia Alshanetsky ilia@ilia.ws.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Security issues: SECURITY.md.

---

Follow @iliaa on X • Blog • If this sped up your stack, ⭐ star it!