Simplify developer experience by replacing yields with Fiber suspension

[ruudk]

Personally I think reading Temporal workflows in PHP are very confusing due to the way you have to yield activities and timers.

Next to that I don't like the fact that I need to use RoadRunner and async PHP only to execute some workflows.

Recently I implemented an SDK in PHP for Absurd durable workflow engine using Fibers.

Basically when a workflow wants to suspend execution it triggers Fiber::suspend with the relevant info.

The SDK then reads the value and can decide to resume the Fiber if needed.

Just wanted to share this as I think it's an interesting alternative or a way to simplify the Temporal SDK.

[xepozz]

Hi, @ruudk
Thanks for your thoughts about Temporal and this SDK. SDK for Absurd looks pretty good and also could be improved.

Personally I think reading Temporal workflows in PHP are very confusing due to the way you have to yield activities and timers.
...
Basically when a workflow wants to suspend execution it triggers Fiber::suspend with the relevant info.
The SDK then reads the value and can decide to resume the Fiber if needed.

I think Fibers API could be implemented and they even can replace Generators API, but we should decide how to design our API properly.

Imagine, that Workflow::execute() returns a Promise which will be passed outside with the yield standing before the expression: yield Workflow::execute().
We can omit it and put Fiber::suspend inside the Workflow::execute function. I suppose that's what you wanted to suggest?
Next, we have [Workflow::execute(), Workflow::execute(), Workflow::execute()] which is an array of Promise's.
We also can yield them and until they resolved, or use Promise::any() and similar wrappers to control the resolving strategy.
How could we replace it with Fibers?

I'd like to ask you to design a public API with the new look. After than we can move further.

Next to that I don't like the fact that I need to use RoadRunner and async PHP only to execute some workflows.

Ok, don't use? I didn't get this point. Could you please elaborate?