The person behind
php-opcua
Gianfrancesco Aurecchia
Creator & maintainer of php-opcua
PHP developer with a focus on industrial automation and IoT. Built php-opcua to bridge the gap between the web development ecosystem and industrial protocols — making OPC UA accessible to every PHP developer without requiring C extensions or external dependencies.
Why php-opcua exists
OPC UA is the dominant protocol in industrial automation, but the PHP ecosystem had no native client. The only options were C extensions (hard to deploy), HTTP-to-OPC gateways (extra infrastructure), or calling out to other languages (complexity).
php-opcua solves this by implementing the OPC UA binary protocol
entirely in PHP. One composer require
and your Laravel or Symfony app can talk to PLCs, SCADA systems,
and sensors directly.
The project started as a personal need — connecting a PHP-based manufacturing dashboard to Siemens PLCs — and grew into a complete ecosystem of 7 packages covering the full OPC UA specification.
The ecosystem today
The people who build it
Get involved
php-opcua is a solo project today, but it doesn't have to stay that way. There are 147,000 lines of PHP behind this ecosystem — and plenty of ways to help shape where it goes next.
Whether you're an industrial automation engineer who can spot a wrong NodeId, a Laravel developer who wants better integration patterns, or someone who just enjoys writing documentation that doesn't suck — there's a place for you here.
Pick an issue. Open a PR. Or just drop a message. Every contribution counts.