Life Cycles

Each PHP instance, whether started from an init script, or from the command line, follows a series of events involving both the Request/Module Init/Shutdown events covered previously, and the actual execution of scripts themselves. How many times, and how frequently each startup and shutdown phase is executed, depends on the SAPI in use. The four most common SAPI configurations are CLI/CGI, Multiprocess Module, Multithreaded Module, and Embedded.