OpenCart on OxPHP

OpenCart is a traditional-mode application with two physical front controllers: index.php (storefront) and admin/index.php (admin panel), plus static assets under image/ and catalog/view/. Its webroot is the project root itself. OxPHP's traditional routing mode — the default with no ENTRY_FILE — serves both entry points as real files and static assets from disk; PHP_DENY_PATHS blocks direct execution of the framework internals.

Stack at a glance

  • OxPHP image: ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:0.10.0-php8.4-alpine3.23 (PHP 8.4)
  • Routing mode: Traditional (no ENTRY_FILE; DOCUMENT_ROOT = project root, overrides the default …/public)
  • Extensions added: gd, mysqli, zip, mbstring
  • Services: OxPHP + MySQL
  • URL: http://localhost:8095 · admin /admin/ · internal http://localhost:9096/health
PHP version

OpenCart 4 requires PHP 8.0+ but its codebase predates 8.5; pin the PHP 8.4 image. OpenCart uses the mysqli driver, not PDO. (Note: OpenCart 3.x will not run on PHP 8.4+ — use OpenCart 4.x.)

Project layout

OpenCart ships as a release archive, not a Composer package. The webroot is the contents of the archive's upload/ directory:

bash
mkdir -p opencart-oxphp/src curl -sL https://github.com/opencart/opencart/releases/download/4.1.0.3/opencart-4.1.0.3.zip -o /tmp/oc.zip unzip -q /tmp/oc.zip -d /tmp/oc cp -a /tmp/oc/upload/. opencart-oxphp/src/ # the installer needs these to exist and be writable: : > opencart-oxphp/src/config.php : > opencart-oxphp/src/admin/config.php

Dockerfile and Compose

The Dockerfile is src/Dockerfile.oxphp, named so it won't collide with OpenCart's bundled Dockerfile.

src/Dockerfile.oxphp
ARG OXPHP_VERSION=0.10.0 ARG PHP_VERSION=8.4 ARG ALPINE_VERSION=3.23 # ── PHP base: OpenCart 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"$(nproc)" gd mysqli zip mbstring \ && apk del .build-deps # ── Composer ────────────────────────────────────────────────── FROM composer:2 AS composer # ── OxPHP artifacts (PHP 8.4 image) ─────────────────────────── FROM ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:${OXPHP_VERSION}-php${PHP_VERSION}-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS oxphp # ── dev: OxPHP server + PHP CLI + Composer ──────────────────── FROM php-base AS dev RUN apk add --no-cache libgcc 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/opencart.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 && 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

OpenCart 4 ships a CLI installer:

bash
docker compose up -d db docker compose run --rm app php install/cli_install.php install \ --username admin --password 'admin123' --email [email protected] \ --http_server 'http://localhost:8095/' --language en-gb \ --db_driver mysqli --db_hostname db --db_username opencart \ --db_password opencart --db_database opencart --db_port 3306 --db_prefix oc_ # OpenCart recommends removing the installer afterwards: rm -rf opencart-oxphp/src/install docker compose up -d app

OxPHP notes

Note
  • Traditional mode serves two front controllers. index.php (storefront) and admin/index.php (admin) are both physical entry points; traditional mode runs each as a real file. Framework mode would funnel everything to one index.php and break the admin.
  • PHP_DENY_PATHS protects the internals. With the webroot at the project root, system/ and install/ sit inside DOCUMENT_ROOT. PHP_DENY_PATHS=/system/**,/install/** blocks direct HTTP execution of those scripts — matched before disk I/O, so there is no existence oracle. The CLI installer runs over the shell and is unaffected. See PHP Execution Deny-List.
  • Dotfiles are already safe. .env-style and dot-segment paths return 404 via dot-path blocking; no rule needed.
  • SEO URLs are off by default. Default OpenCart uses index.php?route=… query routing, which traditional mode handles directly with no rewrite rules.

Verify

bash
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8095/ # 200 storefront curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "http://localhost:8095/index.php?route=common/home" # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8095/admin/ # 200 admin login curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8095/system/startup.php # 404 (denied) curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:9096/health # 200

See also

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