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Atomic Framework
Power in minimalism

Atomic Framework

A modular, full-featured PHP framework built on top of Fat-Free Framework. Atomic provides a structured application skeleton with authentication, queue processing, scheduling, caching, CLI tooling, and more - while staying lightweight and unopinionated.

Application skeleton

Download the application skeleton for a quick start: Atomic Application

Table of Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Project Structure
• Configuration
• Core Concepts
  • Application Lifecycle
  • Routing
  • Middleware
  • Controllers & Models
  • Authentication
  • Database & Migrations
  • Queue System
  • Task Scheduler
  • Plugins
  • Event & Hook System
  • Caching
  • Internationalization
  • CLI
• Security
• Testing
• Documentation
• License

Features

Requirements

• PHP ≥ 8.1 with extensions: json, session, mbstring, fileinfo, pdo, pdo_mysql, curl
• Composer
• MySQL / MariaDB (primary database)
• Redis (recommended for cache, queue, sessions, WebSockets)
• Memcached (optional, alternative cache backend)
• libsodium (bundled with PHP ≥ 7.2 for encryption)

Installation

Quick start and install the framework via Composer:

Download the application skeleton for a quick start: Atomic Application

Create your project entry point:

Generate application keys and scaffold your project:

Project Structure

Configuration

Atomic supports two configuration modes controlled by ATOMIC_LOADER in bootstrap/const.php:

.env Mode (default)

PHP Array Mode

Configuration files in config/ return associative arrays:

bootstrap/error.php configures native PHP error logging to storage/logs/php_errors-YYYY-MM-DD.log when the log directory is writable.

Core Concepts

Application Lifecycle

The bootstrap chain in bootstrap/app.php initializes the application via a fluent interface:

Core framework plugins are loaded before user/application plugins. User and core plugins are both resolved from config/providers.php; plugin directories are not scanned automatically.

Routing

Routes are organized by type and loaded automatically based on request context:

Middleware

Named, parameterized middleware attached to route patterns:

Middleware implements MiddlewareInterface:

Plugins

Plugins are explicit providers. Atomic only loads plugin classes listed in config/providers.php:

The framework does not include every file in a plugin directory and does not load unregistered plugin folders. It resolves each provider class, loads the plugin's main class file when needed, then registers, boots, and loads routes only for enabled registered plugins.

User plugins live under USER_PLUGINS and should follow the generated layout:

Create a plugin scaffold with:

If a plugin uses Composer dependencies, install them for the plugin before booting the application. Atomic provides a CLI command for all provider-registered plugins, or one named plugin:

The CLI route for this command is registered in engine/Atomic/Core/Routes/cli.php as /plugin/deps.

Each plugin that depends on Composer packages should declare runtime checks with required_dependencies(). This gives a clear error when vendor/autoload.php or required package symbols are missing:

Composer autoloading remains the plugin's responsibility: keep plugin dependencies in the plugin's composer.json, run the dependency install command, and ensure the plugin has a readable vendor/autoload.php. Atomic will load that autoloader during provider loading when it exists.

Controllers & Models

Models extend the base Model with built-in validation:

Authentication

Atomic provides a full authentication stack with adapter-based dependency injection:

Security features:

• Bcrypt password hashing (timing-safe verification)
• Session regeneration on login (session fixation protection)
• IP and User-Agent binding with suspicious activity detection
• RateLimit middleware for IP, user, and route throttling
• OAuth state parameter with hash_equals() verification
• Comprehensive audit logging (no credentials in logs)

Database & Migrations

Queue System

Dual-driver queue with Redis (Lua-scripted atomics) and Database (row-level locks):

Task Scheduler

Event & Hook System

Events (modern, hierarchical with priorities):

Hooks (WordPress-compatible actions and filters):

Caching

Multi-driver caching with cascade fallback. Redis, Memcached, folder, and database adapters share the same public behavior: exact-key set, get, exists, clear, namespace-wide reset, and per-instance generation refresh. Prefix deletion is intentionally not part of the shared cache contract because Memcached cannot provide it with the same guarantees.

Atomic also installs a wrapper for Fat-Free Framework's own cache singleton. That keeps F3-native features such as route TTL caching, SQL/schema TTL caching, minify cache, and F3 lexicons working with the selected Atomic backend. The wrapper supports basic F3 cache operations and full reset; suffix-specific reset is not part of Atomic's cache contract. Application code should use Transient or CacheManager instead of calling \Cache::instance() directly. The two layers share the backend choice, not the key format.

Internationalization

Language detection priority: URL prefix → GET parameter → Cookie → Session → Accept-Language header → default.

CLI

Security

Testing

Atomic ships with a comprehensive PHPUnit test suite:

• 723 tests across 49 test classes
• 94.7% pass rate (685 passed, 3 failures, 35 skipped)
• Covers: cryptography, authentication, authorization, validation, middleware, events, hooks, routing, sanitization, scheduling, caching, theme management

Documentation

Full documentation is available in the docs/ directory:

License

Atomic Framework is open-source software licensed under the GPL-3.0-or-later.