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Kickstart Base

What is it?

It's the system (base) part of the Kickstart project. The Kickstart project itself consists of two parts:

• the application part - the noctis/kickstart-app package,
• the system part - (this one).

This package contains all the system files a Kickstart application needs in order to run properly. This is the part of the Kickstart project which the user should not modify, but is free to extend in the application.

What's it good for?

Kickstart was created to be a base for building micro and small PHP applications, either Web- or CLI-based.

What exactly does it do?

It provides you with base code which allows you to skip building basic stuff like handling HTTP requests & responses or database connections and go right into implementing "the meat" of your application, i.e. business logic.

So... like a framework?

Yeah, you could say that. I won't call this project a framework though. Or a mini-framework for that matter. I don't think it fits the definition of "framework" well enough to call it that.

Why should I used Kickstart instead of Laravel, or Symfony?

Good question. Those projects are perfectly fine. In many aspects they're better than Kickstart. They offer way more functionality and have a bigger community. But... They're also pretty big and handling even a single request requires a lot of calls to different methods and functions, and I personally am not a fan of such overhead.

Now, don't get me wrong. A proper framework like the ones I mentioned above are perfectly fine for many use cases. For medium or large scale application I would NOT recommend Kickstart - I'd use one of them. But, for a small, relatively simple application I think they're just overkill.

So... when should I use Kickstart?

If you want to create a micro or small working Web- or CLI-based PHP application, that runs some relatively static SQL queries against the database. For example: you want an application that has a one-field web form, takes the user's input from said form, runs it against the database and finally presents a list of rows that matched the provided value. OK, that's an extremely simple application example, but I think you get the idea.

What components does Kickstart offer?

• routing, with optional and/or required named request params - based on FastRoute, by Nikita Popov and my own implementation of PSR-15's Request Handler,
• dependency-injection - based on PHP-DI by Matthieu Napoli,
• database connectivity - based on EasyDB by the Paragon Initiative Enterprises,
• HTTP requests & responses handling - based on Laminas' Diactoros, HTTP Request Handler Runner and Session components, in accordance with PSR-7
• HTTP middleware - my own implementation, in accordance with the middleware specification of PSR-15
• template engine - based on Symfony's Twig 3,
• CLI (console) commands - based on Symfony's Console component,
• configuration - based on the ever popular PHP dotenv by Vance Lucas.

These are all off-the-shelf free components, which I've "tied" together into a working skeleton application, so you don't have to.

But why isn't there a XYZ component?

I thought about adding a couple more components, like CSV file handling, internationalization (i18n), mail sending... but I've decided to leave that to the end user. If you want, you're free to add them yourself. I'll include examples on how to do that in the documentation.

But I don't need a console component, or a database connectivity component!

You're free not to utilize them. Their existence won't slow your application down, at least not noticeably. If you really want to get rid of a certain component, i.e. completely, you'll find documentation on how to do that in the "Cookbook" section of Kickstart Application documentation.

OK, so how do I install this thing?

This package is not meant to be installed separately. You should create a new project based on the noctis/kickstart-app package. That will install this package.

Wait. "kickstart-app"? I thought this project was called "kickstart"?

Yes, the project is called "Kickstart", but - again - there are two parts of it:

• the core system, called noctis/kickstart,
• the application, called noctis/kickstart-app.

noctis/kickstart is the base system, which gets installed into your vendor folder. This is what one could call "system space". That package's system (core) files:

• should not be modified by the user, and
• should be upgradeable (via composer update).

noctis/kickstart-app is the skeleton app which was built upon the noctis/kickstart package. It contains:

• files which should be modifiable by the user, and
• example "dummy" files, showing you how to utilize the noctis/kickstart's functionalities.

That's dumb. There should be just one package, containing everything!

You're dumb (kidding). That's how it's used to be, back in the 1.x version of Kickstart.

A little history. After making yet another change to Kickstart, required by a specific application I've been working on, and then having to transpose those changes unto other Kickstart-based applications I was working on, I realized two things:

• updating files in one project by manually applying a subset of changes made in another one is stupid, especially considering I have composer update at my disposal, and
• there are some files which the user should be able to modify, and some he/she should steer clear off.

If only those non-modifiable files could reside in the vendor folder, then they'd be easily updatable. Oh wait, they could be located there! So I started separating those two types of files. In the end, only of couple files/classes were left that had to be broken down because they belonged to both worlds.

And that's how noctis/kickstart and noctis/kickstart-app packages were created.

So, what happens when I need to update one of the system files?

Well, if you need to update the base system package, i.e. noctis/kickstart, all you need to do is run

If you need to update the skeleton application, i.e. noctis/kickstart-app - you will have to perform the update manually, if we're talking about an already existing application based on it.

Why does it require PHP 8.1?

Kickstart 3.x used to require PHP 8.0. I was on the fence on whether I should bump that requirement to PHP 8.1 for Kickstart 4.x, but then active support for PHP 8.0 ended and... PHP kinda made the decision for me :)

PHP 8.1 it is.