mini — PHP Micro Framework

A tiny, educational PHP framework used for learning how common framework pieces fit together: a service container, HTTP kernel, routing, a small ActiveRecord-style ORM, migrations, and a minimal view engine.

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+ with PDO and SQLite support
• Composer (optional for autoloading and installing dependencies)

Quick Install

1. Clone the repo:

git clone <repo-url> mini
cd mini

2. Install dependencies (if you add any via Composer):

composer install

3. Ensure the database file exists (project root):

touch database.sqlite

4. Run migrations:

php mini migrate

This will create the users, posts, and migrations tables.

Run the dev server

Start the built-in PHP server (recommended for local development):

php mini serve
# or use php directly:
php -S 127.0.0.1:9003 -t public public/index.php

Open http://127.0.0.1:9003 in your browser.

Seed a sample user

If you'd like a quick user to test User::find(1), insert one with sqlite3:

sqlite3 database.sqlite "INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Elliot Anderson', 'elliot@example.com');"
sqlite3 database.sqlite "SELECT id, name, email FROM users;"

If you see database is locked errors, close any DB browsers (e.g. DB Browser for SQLite) that may be holding the file open.

Basic Tutorial

1. Add a route in routes/web.php:

use Framework\Routing\Router;
use Framework\Http\Response;
use App\Models\User;

return function (Router $router): void {
    $router->get('/hello', function () {
        return new Response('Hello from mini');
    });

    $router->get('/user-test', function () {
        $user = User::find(1);
        return new Response($user ? "User: {$user->getAttribute('name')}" : 'No user');
    });
};

2. Create a controller with the CLI (convenience):

php mini make:controller UserController

Then edit app/Http/Controllers/UserController.php and register routes pointing to UserController@method.

3. Create a migration:

php mini make:migration add_profile_to_users

Edit the generated file in database/migrations/ and then run php mini migrate again.

Views & Templates

• Views live in resources/views and are compiled to storage/views.
• Use View::make('view.name', ['var' => 'value']) to render templates.

Documentation Site

• The small docs site is at docs/index.html. You can preview it locally with a static server:

# from project root
python3 -m http.server 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000/docs/index.html

I added a small scrollspy and syntax highlighting (Highlight.js) to make the docs easier to navigate.

Troubleshooting

• "database is locked": close other applications holding the SQLite file, or kill the process.
• If migrations fail, check the SQL in database/migrations/*.php and run them manually via sqlite3 database.sqlite for debugging.

Contributing

This project is intentionally tiny and educational. Feel free to open issues or PRs with improvements or features you want to try.

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If you'd like, I can also add a README badge, or generate a CONTRIBUTING.md with development guidelines.