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The request lifecycle: a PSR-15 middleware pipeline wrapping a router, typed HTTP errors, and the glue that turns a controller's return value into an emitted PSR-7 response. Depends only on PSR-7/-15/-17 interfaces; the concrete request, response, and factory implementations are the application's to bind.

Lifecycle

HttpKernel is pure glue: capture the request, hand it to the application handler — typically a Pipeline wrapping the Router — and emit the response. The kernel knows nothing about middleware or routing itself.

Pipeline runs the request inward through each middleware to the innermost handler; the response unwinds back outward. The chain is rebuilt from an immutable middleware list on every dispatch, so one instance serves many requests.

Routing

Routes are declared with #[Route] attributes on controller methods:

#[Route('/users/{id}', methods: ['GET'])]
public function show(int $id): ResponseInterface

#[Route('/admin', middleware: [AuthenticateMiddleware::class])]
public function index(): ResponseInterface

The attribute is repeatable. RouteScanner reflects these into a plain, serializable list (no closures); Router::loadRoutes() applies them. Per-route middleware class-strings are resolved through the container into a nested pipeline.

Because that list is closure-free, RouteCache compiles it to a PHP file that returns the array — loaded with a require, so opcache keeps the compiled routes resident instead of reflecting on every request:

$cache = new RouteCache('/path/to/bootstrap/cache/routes.php');
$routes = $cache->load();           // null on a cold cache

if ($routes === null) {
    $routes = (new RouteScanner)->scan($controllers);
    $cache->store($routes);         // atomic write, creates the dir
}

$router->loadRoutes($routes);

RouteCache owns only the file mechanics — load, atomic store, opcache invalidation. Whether to cache is the caller's policy: the app skeleton gates this on a ROUTE_CACHE flag (off in dev so route edits take effect immediately), and rebuilding after a route change is just deleting the file.

A class-level #[RouteGroup] shares a path prefix and/or middleware across all of a controller's routes:

#[RouteGroup('/admin', middleware: [AuthenticateMiddleware::class])]
final class AdminController
{
    #[Route('/')]       // → /admin,        middleware: [AuthenticateMiddleware]
    #[Route('/users')]  // → /admin/users,  middleware: [AuthenticateMiddleware]
}

Grouping is purely a scan-time concern: RouteScanner folds the prefix and middleware into each route, so Router, Route, and #[Route] never learn about groups and the output stays a flat, cacheable list. The prefix is canonicalized (a group root / collapses to the bare prefix), group middleware runs outermost, and a repeated #[RouteGroup] on one class fails loud at scan time.

Argument resolution

ArgumentResolver reflects the target's signature and fills each parameter: the request (by type-hint, any name), a {placeholder} route value coerced to the declared scalar type, a default/null, or — failing all of those — a LogicException, because the signature asked for something routing can't supply. A placeholder value that doesn't fit its declared type is a non-match (→ 404), not a coercion.

Errors

Any layer signals failure by throwing an HttpException (which carries its own status and headers). ErrorHandlerMiddleware is the single authority that turns errors into responses: a mapped HttpException becomes its status; any other Throwable becomes a 500, so a controller bug never leaks a raw fatal. Faults (5xx) are forwarded to a PSR-3 logger under the exception context key; expected 4xx client errors are not. The logger defaults to a NullLogger, so logging is opt-in and the catch path needs no null checks.

This package ships no ServiceProvider; the application wires the kernel, pipeline, router, and PSR-7/-17 implementations at its composition root.

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