Download the PHP package nearbycreative/light-framework without Composer

Light is a micro-framework for quickly spinning up powerful APIs. It can be used both as a standalone framework or embedded into an existing application.

Frameworks like Laravel and Symfony are powerful, but when you need to build out an API, a web framework with the whole kitchen sink can over complicate with option overload.

Light aims to use familiar open source technologies like Eloquent and Phinx, with simple paradigms like MVC to make building out APIs lightning fast.

Requirements

• php7.2+
• A web server with mod_rewrite enabled

Quickstart a Fresh Project

If you're starting your project from scratch, the following commands will get you up and running quickly!

mkdir myproject && cd myproject

composer require nearbycreative/light-framework

./vendor/bin/light init   
php light serve

That's it! You can visit http://localhost:8080 to see Light in action!

Directory structure

light init creates the following directory structure:

app/
    controller/
        Welcome.php
    model/
database/
    migrations/
    seeds/
public/
    .htaccess
    index.php
resources/
    js/
    sass/
    views/
.env
light

Note, this is the default scaffolding to get a new application up and running quickly. If you're including Light into an existing project, you probably don't want to run light init, but rather embed it. Learn how to embed Light in an existing application.

Using route closures:

If you look at the generated public/index.php, you'll see it provided a few simple routes to start you off. If you wanted to, you could create your entire application in a single file using just route closures, ie:

An example index.php:

Spin up a test server with php light serve command.

Visit: http://localhost:8080/test

You'll see the following output:

Visit: http://localhost:8080/test/this-is-cool

You'll see the following output:

Using controllers

Putting all your API endpoints in route closures works fine for small APIs. Though, this can get pretty narly, pretty quickly. Another way to organize your API code is using Light Controllers.

You can create a controller in your application that extends Light\Controller manually, or use the php light make:controller command.

Ie: php light make:controller Test will generate the following controller in _app/Controller/Test.php:

Inside index.php add the following route that points to the controller action you just created:

Use php light serve to test out your new API endpoint:

Visit: http://localhost:8080/foo

Command Line Utility

Try running php light help to learn about more things you can do with the command line script.

Learning more:

The following docs are coming soon!

• Routing
• Requests
• Controllers
• Models
• Migrations
• Pagination
• Helpers
• Authentication
• Light Command Line Utility
• Embedding Light into existing projects
• Using Light as a full MVC Web Framework too