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Installation

Use the starter for a website, or install only the core for a small HTTP service. The Composer vendor is naf; nafphp is the GitHub organisation.

Requirements

  • PHP 8.3 or newer and Composer.
  • PHP's JSON and PDO extensions. Forms also use mbstring; database access needs the PDO driver for your database.
  • A writable project directory. Sessions and logs need writable storage at runtime.

Start with the application skeleton

Run this from the directory in which you keep your projects:

composer create-project naf/app nafphp-demo
cd nafphp-demo
php -S 127.0.0.1:8000 -t public

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/. You should see the NAF welcome page. Stop the development server with Ctrl+C. Keep it bound to localhost; on a deployed site, configure the web server's document root as this project's public/ directory.

The starter installs naf/framework, naf/view and naf/form; naf/session arrives through the form package. It also registers the App\ namespace with Composer.

The starter 0.2.1 includes form and API examples. With naf/framework 0.2.1, successful form redirects still need a protocol correction when using PHP's development server. The tutorial below supplies that correction and replaces the starter routes with the documented exercise.

Continue with Your first application. It replaces the starter demonstration with complete files you can copy, then verifies both an HTML page and a JSON endpoint.

Core-only project

For a service without templates or browser forms, create an empty directory and these files. This is a separate starting point; do not replace the starter's Composer file with this one.

mkdir naf-api
cd naf-api
mkdir -p app public
composer.json
{
    "name": "example/naf-api",
    "require": { "php": ">=8.3", "naf/framework": "^0.2" },
    "autoload": { "psr-4": { "App\\": "app/" } }
}

composer install
bootstrap.php
<?php

define('BASE_PATH', __DIR__);
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use function Naf\app;

app()->run();
public/index.php
<?php

require dirname(__DIR__) . '/bootstrap.php';
app/routes.php
<?php

use function Naf\{json, route};

route()->add('GET', '/', fn() => json(['ok' => true]), 'home');
.env
APP_ENV=dev

php -S 127.0.0.1:8000 -t public

In another terminal, curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/ should return {"ok": true} (with whitespace for readability). This path needs no view, form, session or database plugin.

Environment and next steps

Use APP_ENV=dev locally, APP_ENV=test for tests and APP_ENV=prod in production. Use these exact values: production is not the production constant. Keep .env and .env.local out of version control. See Configuration.