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Getting Started
Your First App

Your First App

The minimum viable ePHPm setup is a directory of PHP files plus a few lines of TOML.

1. Create a tiny app 

mkdir -p ~/myapp
cat > ~/myapp/index.php <<'EOF'
<?php
echo "Hello from ePHPm. PHP " . PHP_VERSION . " is running embedded.\n";
echo "Today is " . date("Y-m-d H:i:s") . ".\n";
EOF

2. Create the config 

cat > ~/ephpm.toml <<'EOF'
[server]
listen = "127.0.0.1:8080"
document_root = "/home/you/myapp"   # adjust to absolute path of ~/myapp
EOF

That’s it. No php-fpm.conf, no Nginx server block, no Apache vhost.

3. Run 

ephpm serve --config ~/ephpm.toml

Hit it:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8080/

You should see your “Hello from ePHPm” message. The PHP runtime is embedded inside the same process — no FastCGI, no IPC, no second daemon to manage.

4. Add a database

ePHPm bundles SQLite (exposed as MySQL via litewire). Append to ephpm.toml:

[db.sqlite]
path = "/home/you/myapp/app.db"

Restart the server. PHP can now connect to 127.0.0.1:3306 with pdo_mysql — it thinks it’s MySQL, but it’s actually a single-file SQLite database. See Database guide for the details.

5. WordPress / Laravel

Drop a real app into document_root and it works the same way. Tweak the fallback chain so pretty permalinks resolve:

[server]
listen = "0.0.0.0:8080"
document_root = "/var/www/wordpress"
fallback = ["$uri", "$uri/", "/index.php?$query_string"]   # the default

For step-by-step guides see:

What’s running?

You started a single process that’s serving HTTP, executing PHP, hosting a SQLite database with MySQL wire compatibility, and (if you turn it on) exposing Prometheus metrics, an embedded KV store on :6379, and ACME-issued TLS. No other daemons. One binary.

What’s next?

InstallConfiguration