README

Destruction as a Service

The package provides explicit resource management for PHP applications through the Destroyable interface. It solves memory leaks in long-running applications by enabling deterministic cleanup of resources and breaking circular reference chains that prevent garbage collection.

Why Not Just __destruct()?

PHP's __destruct() method has critical limitations with circular references. While simple two-object cycles (A → B → A) can sometimes be resolved by gc_collect_cycles(), more complex scenarios with three or more interconnected objects often fail to trigger destructors at all.

Additionally, gc_collect_cycles() has significant performance overhead, making frequent calls impractical in high-performance applications.

// Simple cycle - might be collected eventually
$a->ref = $b;
$b->ref = $a;

// Complex cycle - often never collected
$a->ref = $b;
$b->ref = $c; 
$c->ref = $a;

The Destroyable interface provides explicit control over cleanup, ensuring resources are freed deterministically without relying on garbage collection cycles or performance-impacting manual collection calls.

Perfect for daemon processes, event-driven applications, and any scenario where deterministic resource cleanup is critical.

Installation

composer require internal/destroy