README

Experimental PHP desktop emulation library.

For now, this is a simple library that runs local PHP projects like desktop apps. It uses Chromium and aims to produce results similar to what Electron does with JavaScript.

Read Security and use it for development purposes only. Plans are to improve performance and security in the future.

Installation

Require the library using Composer.

composer require covaleski/intraphp

Usage

Check requirements

You must have Chromium and PHP installed in your system. Check platform requirements using:

./vendor/bin/intraphp-reqs

If something is flagged as "not found", install it, add a installed package to your PATH or change the library executable using environment variables.

Simplest setup

Just add your index.php file to your project root directory and run the command:

./vendor/bin/intraphp

See below if you want to set a different public directory and other parameters.

Custom setups

You can set a custom public directory and other settings using a bootstrap file.

Create a file named boostrap.php in your project root directory and add the code you want to run before starting your application.

// bootstrap.php
putenv('APP_DOCROOT=' . __DIR__ . '/public');
putenv('PHP_EXECUTABLE=php8.1');

The example above sets the folder public as the public directory and tells the library to use php8.1 to setup the server.

Run the intraphp command to start your application.

./vendor/bin/intraphp

Test configuration

To see the result of your configuration without running your application, use:

./vendor/bin/intraphp-vars

Environment

The library uses the following environment variables to setup the application:

Security

This library is a simple experiment and has critical security weaknesses for now:

PHP's built-in server is used - it is not suited for production;
The host localhost is accessible by any application in your computer;
No encryption is used and the default protocol is http:, not https:;
No additional INI directives are set;
No additional Chromium flags are set;
Your home is accessible by the application as it is not sandboxed.

There are plans to make it suitable for production by replacing localhost by Unix domain sockets, using file permissions and encryption for protection, setting INI directives and other measures.

covaleski / intraphp

Maintainers

Details