Call Any Backbone-Dispatcher Library From Python

Generic Python bridge for any derafu/backbone-dispatcher-based PHP library, via swoole/phpy — without a caller ever having to know phpy exists.

Why

derafu/backbone-dispatcher’s SafeDispatcherInterface already turns any Backbone operation into something that never throws a raw PHP exception and always returns a serializable value — exactly the contract a foreign-language caller needs. swoole/phpy lets Python call into a real, embedded PHP interpreter in the same process. This package is the glue between the two: it boots a real SafeDispatcherInterface and exposes it as dispatch(operation_id, **params), translating PHP exceptions into typed Python exceptions on the way back.

It knows nothing about any specific library. A specific PHP library’s own bridge subclasses GenericDispatcher (and, for exploring a package tree, GenericExplorer — see Exploring the Package Tree below), pre-wiring how its own SafeDispatcherInterface/SafeExplorerInterface gets booted — this is exactly what this package’s own test suite does, against a real, minimal PHP fixture (no mocks):

class ExampleDispatcher(GenericDispatcher):
    _BOOTSTRAP_CLASS = 'Derafu\\TestsBackboneBridgePython\\Fixture\\Bootstrap'

    def __init__(self, autoload_path=None):
        super().__init__(self._BOOTSTRAP_CLASS, autoload_path=autoload_path)

Installation

pip install derafu-backbone-bridge

phpy itself is not a normal pip dependency and never will be resolvable from PyPI: it requires a PHP build with --enable-embed, so it must already be present system-wide wherever this package runs — see Docker with Python and Caddy for a ready-made image with an optional PHPY_ENABLED build. Install this package into a virtualenv created with --system-site-packages so it can see the system phpy.

Requirements

Python 3.14+. phpy itself requires PHP built with --enable-embed.