Restify-PHP

Simplicity

Performance

Portability

Ultra-light, zero-dependency PHP 8+ micro-framework for building blazing fast JSON APIs. Drop your domain objects into class/, add procedural endpoints in api/, start the built-in server, and you are shipping without Composer or vendor installs.

Why Restify?

Pure PHP 8+ with strict typing, PSR-12 style, and no bundled dependencies.
File-first development: class/ for domain logic and attributes, api/ for endpoint scripts, restify/ for framework internals.
Async ready: Fibers, curl-multi, non-blocking sockets, and background workers useable with php restify-cli run --async.
Drop-in middleware: CORS, rate limiting, logging with redaction, unified exception handler, JWT auth, request validation.
Configurable caching via APCu/opcache, DB helpers for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB.
OpenAPI generator produces JSON/YAML specs with example payloads and spun-up Swagger UI.
Built-in tests, CLI scaffolding, install command, and Docker/docker-compose templates for instant bootstrapping.
Health check at /health for orchestrators plus /docs generation for humans.

Quick start

php -S localhost:8000 -t public

Composer install

composer require restify-php/restify-php
php vendor/bin/restify install
php restify-cli run --async     # optional fiber runtime

Command line helpers

php restify-cli --help
php restify-cli make:class App\Domain\User
php restify-cli run --async
php restify-cli docs:openapi --format yaml --serve --port 8081
php restify-cli log
php restify-cli authentication
php restify-cli test --phpunit   # falls back to native runner when phpunit missing

Composer scripts

composer serve          # php -S 0.0.0.0:8000 -t public
composer docs           # openapi generation
composer test           # delegates to restify-cli test

Docker

docker compose up --build
# App available at http://localhost:8000, Redis exposed on 6379 (optional caching)

Environment snippet

.env carries sane defaults; tweak as needed:

LOGGING_ENABLED=true
LOG_LEVEL=info
LOG_PATH=storage/logs/restify.log
LOG_BODY_LIMIT=2048
CORS_ENABLED=true
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=*
AUTH_ENABLED=true
AUTH_PUBLIC_PATHS=/health
EXCEPTIONS_TRACE=false

Health check

GET /health returns:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2025-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Documentation

The complete guide (architecture, CLI, async, auth, caching, validation, OpenAPI, middleware, packaging) lives in docs/restify.md.

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