Yii3 on OxPHP

Yii3 is the leanest recipe here. The yiisoft/app template has a public/index.php front controller, needs no database, and, because most string handling is polyfilled, needs essentially no extra PHP extensions. It maps onto OxPHP's framework routing mode and runs as a single service.

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: mbstring (native, for speed — the runtime otherwise polyfills it)
  • Services: OxPHP only
  • URL: http://localhost:8094 · internal http://localhost:9095/health
Note

yiisoft/app declares "php": "8.2 - 8.5", so the default PHP 8.5 image fits.

Project layout

bash
mkdir -p yii3-oxphp/src docker run --rm -v "$PWD/yii3-oxphp/src":/app -w /app \ composer:2 create-project yiisoft/app . --prefer-dist cp yii3-oxphp/src/.env.example yii3-oxphp/src/.env

Dockerfile and Compose

src/Dockerfile
ARG OXPHP_VERSION=0.10.0 ARG PHP_VERSION=8.5 ARG ALPINE_VERSION=3.23 # ── PHP base: native mbstring ───────────────────────────────── FROM php:${PHP_VERSION}-zts-alpine${ALPINE_VERSION} AS php-base RUN apk add --no-cache oniguruma \ && apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps oniguruma-dev \ && docker-php-ext-install -j"$(nproc)" mbstring \ && apk del .build-deps # ── Composer ────────────────────────────────────────────────── FROM composer:2 AS composer # ── OxPHP artifacts (PHP 8.5 default image) ─────────────────── FROM ghcr.io/oxphp/oxphp:${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"]
Note

The yiisoft/app template ships its own whitelist-style .dockerignore; keep it. With a bind-mounted src/, the COPY is only a fallback.

Install and first run

bash
docker compose up -d --build docker compose exec app php yii # the Yii console

OxPHP notes

Note
  • No database, no extra services. The smallest possible OxPHP deployment: one image, one process.
  • yiisoft/assets publishes static into public/assets/<hash>/. Real files on disk, served directly by framework mode. No URL-rewrite gymnastics are needed (unlike some asset pipelines that embed a version segment in the URL).

Verify

bash
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8094/ # 200 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8094/nonexistent # 404 (Yii router) curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:9095/health # 200

See also

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