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 >= 8.0
• 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 bootstraps the System class which processes the request through the router defined in app/Http/routes.php.

$app = new System();
$app->bootstrap()
    ->processRequest()
    ->complete();

If no route matches, the framework renders views/404.php.

Constants

Application constants live in constant.php.

// Uncomment to set the environment, defaults to production
//const ROOLITH_ENV = 'development';

const ROOLITH_CONFIG_ROOT = APP_ROOT . '/config';
const APP_VIEW_ROOT = APP_ROOT . '/views';
const APP_ENABLE_CMS = false;

When APP_ENABLE_CMS is false, all files under the Admin folder are deactivated.

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