Drupal on OxPHP

Drupal 11 uses web/index.php as a front controller with clean URLs — every non-file path rewrites to index.php, which is exactly OxPHP's framework routing mode. Aggregated CSS/JS land in web/sites/default/files/ and are served from disk like any other static asset.

Stack at a glance

  • OxPHP image: ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:0.10.0-php8.4-alpine3.23 (PHP 8.4)
  • Routing mode: Framework (ENTRY_FILE=index.php; DOCUMENT_ROOT=/var/www/html/web overrides the default …/public)
  • Extensions added: gd, pdo_mysql, zip, mbstring
  • Services: OxPHP + MySQL
  • URL: http://localhost:8097 · internal http://localhost:9098/health
PHP version

Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3+ and officially supports 8.4. Its Symfony-component stack predates PHP 8.5, so this recipe pins the PHP 8.4 OxPHP image. Drupal uses PDO (pdo_mysql), not mysqli.

Project layout

bash
mkdir -p drupal-oxphp/src docker run --rm -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \ -v "$PWD/drupal-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 create-project drupal/recommended-project . \ --ignore-platform-reqs --no-interaction --prefer-dist docker run --rm -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \ -v "$PWD/drupal-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 require drush/drush --ignore-platform-reqs --no-interaction
Note

--ignore-platform-reqs is needed because the stock composer:2 image has no gd; the extension is only required at runtime, where the OxPHP image provides it.

Dockerfile and Compose

src/Dockerfile
ARG OXPHP_VERSION=0.10.0 ARG PHP_VERSION=8.4 ARG ALPINE_VERSION=3.23 # ── PHP base: Drupal runtime extensions ─────────────────────── FROM php:${PHP_VERSION}-zts-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS php-base RUN apk add --no-cache \ libpng libjpeg-turbo freetype oniguruma libzip \ && apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps \ libpng-dev libjpeg-turbo-dev freetype-dev oniguruma-dev libzip-dev \ && docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-jpeg --with-freetype \ && docker-php-ext-install -j"$(nproc)" gd pdo_mysql zip mbstring \ && apk del .build-deps # ── Composer ────────────────────────────────────────────────── FROM composer:2 AS composer # ── OxPHP artifacts (PHP 8.4 image) ─────────────────────────── FROM ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:${OXPHP_VERSION}-php${PHP_VERSION}-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS oxphp # ── dev: OxPHP server + PHP CLI + Composer + drush ──────────── FROM php-base AS dev RUN apk add --no-cache libgcc git COPY --from=composer /usr/bin/composer /usr/local/bin/composer COPY --from=oxphp /usr/local/bin/oxphp /usr/local/bin/oxphp COPY --from=oxphp /usr/local/lib/liboxphp_bridge.so /usr/local/lib/ COPY --from=oxphp /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/ /tmp/oxphp-ext/ RUN cp /tmp/oxphp-ext/*/oxphp_sapi.so "$(php -r 'echo ini_get("extension_dir");')/" \ && rm -rf /tmp/oxphp-ext \ && echo "extension=oxphp_sapi.so" > /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/oxphp-ext.ini RUN { \ echo "[opcache]"; echo "opcache.enable=1"; echo "opcache.enable_cli=1"; \ echo "opcache.validate_timestamps=1"; echo "opcache.revalidate_freq=0"; \ } > /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/opcache-dev.ini RUN { \ echo "memory_limit=256M"; echo "upload_max_filesize=64M"; \ echo "post_max_size=64M"; echo "max_execution_time=300"; \ } > /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/drupal.ini RUN getent passwd www-data >/dev/null \ || adduser -D -H -u 82 -G www-data -s /sbin/nologin www-data RUN mkdir -p /var/www/html/web && chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html ENV LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib WORKDIR /var/www/html EXPOSE 80 9090 CMD ["oxphp"]

Install and first run

drush is the cleanest non-interactive installer:

bash
docker compose up -d --build docker compose exec app vendor/bin/drush site:install standard \ --db-url=mysql://drupal:drupal@db:3306/drupal \ --account-name=admin --account-pass=admin123 \ --site-name="Drupal OxPHP" -y

OxPHP notes

Note
  • Clean URLs are framework mode. Drupal's RewriteCond !-f + RewriteRule ^ index.php is precisely what framework mode does — serve existing files, dispatch everything else to web/index.php.
  • Aggregated assets are served from disk. Drupal writes combined CSS/JS to web/sites/default/files/css and …/js; OxPHP serves them as static files.
  • First request is slow, then fast. The cold first request warms Twig compilation, asset aggregation, and caches (≈15 s). Subsequent requests are single-digit milliseconds. This is Drupal warmup, not OxPHP overhead.

Verify

bash
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8097/ # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8097/user/login # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:9098/health # 200

See also

Found a mistake? Report it →