Symfony on OxPHP

Symfony's public/index.php front controller drops straight into OxPHP's framework routing mode. The symfony/skeleton needs no database, so this is a single-service deployment. Add Doctrine and a db service later when you wire up persistence.

Stack at a glance

  • OxPHP image: ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:0.10.0 (PHP 8.5)
  • Routing mode: Framework (ENTRY_FILE=index.php; DOCUMENT_ROOT left at the default /var/www/html/public)
  • Extensions added: intl, mbstring (Symfony's recommended baseline; the runtime strictly needs only core extensions)
  • Services: OxPHP only
  • URL: http://localhost:8096 · internal http://localhost:9097/health
PHP version

Symfony 8 declares "php": ">=8.4", which the default PHP 8.5 image satisfies. Confirm a dependency does not cap the upper bound with composer check-platform-reqs --no-dev.

Project layout

bash
mkdir -p symfony-oxphp/src docker run --rm -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \ -v "$PWD/symfony-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 create-project symfony/skeleton . --prefer-dist # optional, for a rendered page: docker run --rm -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \ -v "$PWD/symfony-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 require twig symfony/asset

Dockerfile and compose file

src/Dockerfile
ARG OXPHP_VERSION=0.10.0 ARG PHP_VERSION=8.5 ARG ALPINE_VERSION=3.23 # ── PHP base: intl + mbstring ───────────────────────────────── FROM php:${PHP_VERSION}-zts-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS php-base RUN apk add --no-cache icu-libs oniguruma \ && apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps icu-dev oniguruma-dev \ && docker-php-ext-install -j"$(nproc)" intl mbstring \ && apk del .build-deps # ── Composer ────────────────────────────────────────────────── FROM composer:2 AS composer # ── OxPHP artifacts (PHP 8.5 default image) ─────────────────── FROM ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:${OXPHP_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 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 COPY --chown=www-data:www-data . /var/www/html EXPOSE 80 9090 CMD ["oxphp"]

Install and first run

bash
docker compose up -d --build docker compose exec app php bin/console about

OxPHP notes

Note
  • Minimal extension footprint. The Symfony skeleton's runtime needs only core extensions (ctype, iconv, xml), all present in the base image — mbstring is otherwise polyfilled. Native intl + mbstring are added because any real Symfony app uses them and the native versions are faster than the polyfill.
  • APP_ENV from the container environment. Symfony reads it from the real environment over .env, so set it in Compose.
  • Static assets are served from public/ by framework mode — {{ asset('css/app.css') }} resolves to a real file on disk and is served directly, falling through to index.php only on a miss.

Verify

bash
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8096/ # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8096/no-such-route # 404 (Symfony router) curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:9097/health # 200

See also

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