Getting Started

Roolith is a minimalistic PHP micro-framework. It keeps the core small and lets plain PHP do the heavy lifting. Use it for any project, personal or commercial.

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.2
• Composer

Installation

Create a new project with Composer.

composer create-project roolith/framework your_app_name

Project Structure

├── app/
│   ├── Controllers/       # Application controllers
│   ├── Core/              # Framework glue code (Request, Validator, factories)
│   ├── Http/
│   │   └── routes.php     # Route definitions
│   ├── Middlewares/       # Middleware classes
│   ├── Models/            # Model classes
│   └── Utils/             # Utility classes
├── config/
│   └── config.php         # Application configuration
├── lang/                  # Localization files (en, es, ...)
├── source/                # SCSS and JS sources (frontend workflow)
├── views/                 # Template files
├── constant.php           # Application constants
├── index.php              # Front controller
└── roolith                # CLI entry for the generator

How a Request Flows

All requests hit index.php. It delegates to App\Core\System::run(), which wraps bootstrap()->processRequest()->complete() with RedirectException emit plus ErrorHandler handling and complete() in finally, and never throws. Do not call the bare bootstrap()->processRequest()->complete() chain yourself, it leaks RedirectException redirects.

App\Core\System::run();

If no route matches, the framework renders views/404.php. A path that exists for another method responds with 405 Method Not Allowed and an Allow header. Canonical host redirects are emitted before routing, and uncaught errors go to ErrorHandler (Whoops page in development, generic 500 with trace id in production). There is no views/500.php override yet.

Constants

Application constants live in constant.php.

const ROOLITH_CONFIG_ROOT = APP_ROOT . '/config';
const APP_VIEW_ROOT = APP_ROOT . '/views';
// CMS is env-driven: APP_ENABLE_CMS=1 in .env mounts the CMS release asset.

When APP_ENABLE_CMS is off (default), all files under the Admin folder are deactivated. See CMS installer for the release-asset flow; installer.zip stays tracked locally for reference and local install but is excluded from distribution archives.

Running the App

The fastest way is Docker, it starts PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin with one command. See Docker for details.

docker compose up -d --build

Alternatively, point your web server or vhost to the project root and open it in the browser. The default baseUrl in config/config.php is http://localhost:8080/, adjust it to your local setup.

For the frontend assets workflow (SCSS and JS), see Frontend Workflow.

Next Steps

• Define your first routes in Routing
• Render pages with Controllers and Views
• Talk to the database with Models