Please read this document to learn how to create MVC applications that have user management since the project creation.

Beacon - The Foundation for Modern PHP Applications

About Beacon

Beacon is a modern PHP application starter framework designed for developers who value simplicity, maintainability, and rapid development.

It combines proven architectural concepts such as dependency injection, service providers, middleware, routing, validation, authentication, database migrations, and Eloquent ORM into a clean, lightweight, and developer-friendly foundation.

Unlike many frameworks that require extensive initial setup, Beacon is distributed as a complete project skeleton, including a fully integrated authentication system with user registration, login, password reset, remember-me functionality, and email verification. This allows developers to focus on building their applications rather than spending time on repetitive boilerplate configuration.

Beacon also includes a lightweight Neumorphism-based CSS starter design featuring commonly used UI components such as cards, buttons, form controls, alerts, and popovers. The design serves as a practical starting point and can be customized or replaced entirely to suit your project's requirements.

Whether you're building a personal website, business application, administration panel, or custom web platform, Beacon provides a solid and extensible foundation to get started quickly.

Features

• Modern MVC architecture
• Dependency Injection Container
• Service Providers
• Middleware Pipeline
• Named Routes
• Twig Templating
• Eloquent ORM
• Database Migrations
• Authentication System
• Remember Me Authentication
• CSRF Protection
• DTO-based Validation
• Flash Messages
• Console Commands
• Environment Configuration
• PSR-4 Autoloading
• Docker Development Environment (with HTTPS support)

Requirements

• PHP 8.5+
• Composer
• MariaDB / MySQL
• Docker (optional)

Installation

1. Create a new Beacon project:
   composer create-project shworx/beacon my-project
   

2. Enter the project directory:
   cd my-project
   

3. Install dependencies:
   composer install
   

4. Copy the environment configuration:
   cp .env.example .env
   

5. Generate an application secret:
   php console app:key
   

6. Copy the generated application secret to the `.env` file (`APP_SECRET`)

7. Run database migrations:
   php console migrate
   

8. Start your web server and begin building.

Project Structure

project-directory
??? app
?    ??? Console
?    ?    ??? Commands      // Contains all the Console commands
?    ??? Container
?    ??? Controllers        // Contains all Controllers
?    ??? Database
?    ??? DTO                // Contains all the DTO's
?    ??? Enums
?    ??? Exceptions
?    ??? Helpers
?    ??? Http
?    ??? Interfaces
?    ??? Middleware
?    ??? Models             // Contains all Models
?    ??? Providers
?    ??? Routing
?    ??? Services
?    ??? Support
?    ??? View
??? bootstrap
??? config
??? console
??? database
?    ??? migrations
??? docker
??? public
?    ??? assets
?    ?    ??? css
?    ?    ??? js
?    ?    ??? favicons      
?    ?    ??? img
??? resources
?    ??? stubs
?    ??? views              // Contains all the Twig templates
??? routes
?    ??? web.php            // This is where the routes are defined
??? storage
??? tests

Console Commands

List all available commands: php console<br> Create Migration: php console make:migration create_users_table<br> Run Migrations: php console migrate<br> Rollback Migrations: php console migrate:rollback<br> Generate Application Secret: php console app:key<br>

Routing Examples

Basic routes

// routes/web.php
$router->get('/', [HomeController::class, 'index'], 'home');
$router->post('/', [MyController::class, 'submit'], 'home.submit');

Routes with parameter

// routes/web.php
$router->get('/my-route/{first}/{second}', [MyController::class, 'myMethod'], 'my-name');

// app/Controllers/MyController.php
public function myMethod($first, $second): Response {
    ...
}

Route groups

$router->group(
    prefix: '',
    callback: function (Router $router) {
        $router->get('/dashboard', [DashboardController::class, 'index'], 'dashboard');
    },
    middleware: [AuthMiddleware::class]
);

Generate URLs in Twig:

<a href="{{ route('home') }}">Home</a>
<a href="{{ route('my-name', {'first' : 'first_value', 'second' : 'second_value'}) }}"

Validation

Beacon integrates Symfony Validator with DTO-based validation.

Example:

// app/DTO/LoginDto.php
namespace App\DTO;

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

final readonly class LoginDto
{
public function __construct(
#[Assert\NotBlank]
#[Assert\Email]
public string $email,

        #[Assert\NotBlank]
        public string $password,
    ) {}
}

Validate example:

// app/Controllers/LoginController.php

$dto = LoginDto::fromArray($request->all());
$validator->validate($dto);

Database

Beacon uses Laravel's Eloquent ORM.

$user = User::query()
    ->where('email', $email)
    ->first();

With relation:

$prt = PasswordResetToken::with('user')
    ->where('token_hash', $tokenHash)
    ->first();

Create migrations:

php console make:migration create_posts_table

Run migrations:

php console migrate

Philosophy

Beacon aims to provide:

• A clean architecture
• Modern PHP practices
• Minimal magic
• Maximum readability
• Fast project setup
• Full developer control

Beacon does not try to hide PHP. Instead, it embraces PHP and provides a solid foundation for building maintainable applications.

License

Beacon is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT License.

Local Docker environment setup

Beacon comes with a pre-configured Docker container setup, consisting of 3 containers: - beacon-webserver (Nginx, PHP 8.5) - beacon-maria (MariaDB 11.5) - beacon-mailpit (Mailpit [latest])

Generate SSL cert & key for local Docker environment

To run the local Docker container setup, you should first generate a fresh SSL cert and key. To do so, follow the steps below.

Generating SSL cert

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -subj "/C=CA/ST=QC/O=SHWorX/CN=beacon.local" -addext "subjectAltName=DNS:beacon.local" -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout ./docker/config/ssl/beacon.local.key -out ./docker/config/ssl/beacon.local.cert;

> Important notes: > 1. If you have changed the CN value beacon.local to any other local domain you want to use, then you also need to update the value for server_name (line 13), and the value in add_header (line 88) in docker/config/conf.d/default.conf. > You also need to update APP_URL in .env to match your local domain. > 2. If you have changed the file names for the cert and the key, then you also need to update the entries in docker/config/conf.d/self-signed.conf.

Generating Diffie-Hellman params

openssl dhparam -out ./docker/config/ssl/dhparam.pem 4096

You can now start the local Docker environment on CLI via Docker compose.

docker compose up -d

Helper aliases inside beacon-webserver container

The beacon-webserver container comes along with some helper aliases: - clearlogs This alias clears the logs: /var/log/nginx/access.log (docker/logs/access.log), /var/log/nginx/error.log (docker/logs/error.log),

Author

Beacon is created and maintained by

Steffen Haase<br> SHWorX Development

Website: https://shworx.com<br> GitHub: https://github.com/SHWorX