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phpnomad/loader

phpnomad/loader defines what an initializer is and provides the Bootstrapper that composes them. Every PHPNomad application starts by constructing a Bootstrapper with a DI container and a list of initializers, then calling load(). That's the moment bindings get registered, event listeners get attached, REST routes get wired up, and platform integrations take hold.

The pattern is the spine of the framework. phpnomad/core depends on it, Siren uses it directly as the top of its Application class, and it's been running in production for years across Siren, several MCP servers, and other client systems.

Installation

Most applications pull in phpnomad/core instead, which depends on phpnomad/loader and bundles the rest of the framework foundation. Install loader directly if you're building from the bottom up or writing your own core.

Quick Start

Construct a Bootstrapper with your container and one or more initializers, then call load().

Here's what an initializer looks like. This one registers a class binding and an event listener, which covers the two most common cases.

The Bootstrapper inspects each initializer for opt-in interfaces and wires it up based on what it implements. An initializer can implement one of these interfaces or a dozen. Most are small and focused on a single slice of your application.

Key Concepts

Initializers

An initializer is a class that declares a chunk of your application's setup. Rather than putting every binding, listener, and route in one file, you break setup into small pieces and compose them in the Bootstrapper. Each PHPNomad package that needs to hook into the framework ships its own initializer, and your application code does the same.

This is how the framework stays platform-agnostic. Swap WordPressInitializer for a Symfony initializer and your application initializers keep working because they don't know anything about the platform they run on.

What the Bootstrapper does

When you call load(), the Bootstrapper walks each initializer and checks which opt-in interfaces it implements. The ones you'll reach for most often are HasClassDefinitions, HasListeners, HasControllers, HasLoadCondition, and Loadable.

• HasClassDefinitions registers class bindings into the DI container
• HasListeners attaches event listeners through the event strategy
• HasControllers registers REST endpoints through the REST strategy
• HasLoadCondition lets the initializer decide whether it should run at all
• Loadable runs an arbitrary load() method after everything else is wired

Additional opt-in interfaces cover mutations, event bindings, task handlers, GraphQL type definitions, console commands, facades, and update routines. The bootstrapping guide at phpnomad.com walks through each one with examples.

Documentation

Full documentation lives at phpnomad.com, including the bootstrapping guide, the initializer interface reference, and how phpnomad/loader composes with phpnomad/di, phpnomad/event, phpnomad/rest, and the rest of the framework.

Contributing

PHPNomad is built and maintained by Alex Standiford, who's been using it for years to ship real software. Because phpnomad/loader is the foundation every application sits on, changes here are conservative and get exercised in production before they land.

Contributions are welcome. Good places to start include filing an issue for a bug you hit, proposing a new opt-in interface with a concrete use case, or improving the bootstrapping docs. Each PHPNomad package lives in its own repo, so issues and pull requests for loader go on this repo. If you want orientation before picking something up, opening a discussion issue on phpnomad/core is a fine place to start.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.txt for the full text.