October CMS on OxPHP

October CMS (Laravel-based) ships with index.php at the project root, next to config/, .env, and vendor/. Its nginx config rewrites everything to index.php and serves static only from whitelisted asset paths (*/assets). To match that posture on OxPHP without exposing theme source or config, this recipe builds a public/ document root with php artisan october:mirror public and points framework mode at it.

It's the recipe that exercises OxPHP's SYMLINK_ALLOW_PATHS.

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 left at the default /var/www/html/public)
  • Extensions added: gd, pdo_mysql, mbstring, zip
  • Services: OxPHP + MySQL
  • URL: http://localhost:8098 · backend /admin · internal http://localhost:9099/health
No license needed

october/october installs straight from Packagist. The Laravel-11 component stack predates PHP 8.5, so this pins the PHP 8.4 image.

Project layout

bash
mkdir -p october-oxphp/src docker run --rm -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \ -v "$PWD/october-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 create-project october/october . --no-interaction --prefer-dist

Then point src/.env at the database service (DB_HOST=db, DB_DATABASE=october, …) and set APP_URL=http://localhost:8098.

Dockerfile and compose file

The Dockerfile is named src/Dockerfile.oxphp to avoid colliding with October's own assets.

src/Dockerfile.oxphp
ARG OXPHP_VERSION=0.10.0 ARG PHP_VERSION=8.4 ARG ALPINE_VERSION=3.23 # ── PHP base: October 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"$(nproc)" gd pdo_mysql mbstring zip \ && apk del .build-deps # ── Composer ────────────────────────────────────────────────── FROM composer:2 AS composer # ── OxPHP artifacts (PHP 8.4 image) ─────────────────────────── FROM ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:${OXPHP_VERSION}-php${PHP_VERSION}-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS oxphp # ── dev: OxPHP server + PHP CLI + Composer ──────────────────── 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/october.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/public && 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

October CMS 4 has no october:install wizard command and seeds no default admin, so the sequence is migrate → build content tables → mirror → create admin:

bash
docker compose up -d db # 1. Schema and module seeds docker compose run --rm app php artisan october:migrate # 2. Dynamic content tables (the demo theme uses Tailor content) docker compose run --rm app php artisan tailor:migrate # 3. Build the public/ document root (index.php + */assets symlinks) docker compose run --rm app sh -c 'mkdir -p public && php artisan october:mirror public --relative' # 4. Create a backend super-user (no install wizard exists) docker compose run --rm app php artisan tinker --execute ' $u = Backend\Models\User::firstOrNew(["login" => "admin"]); $u->email = "[email protected]"; $u->password = "admin123"; $u->password_confirmation = "admin123"; $u->is_superuser = true; $u->is_activated = true; $u->save();' docker compose up -d app

OxPHP notes

Note
  • october:mirror public reproduces October's nginx asset whitelist. It creates a public/ directory holding only index.php (a symlink) and symlinks to the */assets directories — theme .htm pages, config/, .env, vendor/, and storage/logs stay outside the document root. With DOCUMENT_ROOT=…/public, none of them are reachable over HTTP.
  • SYMLINK_ALLOW_PATHS=/var/www/html is required. OxPHP blocks symlinks that resolve outside DOCUMENT_ROOT by default. The mirror's symlinks point back into the project tree (/var/www/html/modules/…, /var/www/html/themes/…), so the project root is whitelisted. /var is exact-blacklisted but not prefix-blacklisted, so /var/www/html is allowed. See Symlink Allow Paths.
  • tailor:migrate is easy to forget. Without it, the demo theme throws SQLSTATE 1146: table 'xc_…' doesn't exist, because its content collections are Tailor blueprints whose tables are built separately from october:migrate.

Verify

bash
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8098/ # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8098/admin # 302 → login curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8098/themes/demo/assets/css/theme.css # 200 # the document-root mirror keeps internals out: curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8098/.env # 404 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8098/themes/demo/pages/home.htm # 404

See also

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