Need to make two more changes to your extension before it will work... register with the streams layer (MINIT) unregister from the streams layer (MSHUTDOWN) PHP_MINIT_FUNCTION(example) { ... php_register_url_stream_wrapper("example", &example_wrapper TSRMLS_CC); ... } PHP_MSHUTDOWN_FUNCTION(example) { ... php_unregister_url_stream_wrapper("example" TSRMLS_CC); ... };