Installation

OwnWork is distributed as a Composer project.

Requirements

OwnWork currently requires:

• PHP ^8.0
• Composer

The framework declares dhruv125/coretex ^1.0 as a runtime dependency.

Node.js and npm are optional. They are required only when using OwnWork's frontend development/build tooling for Tailwind CSS and JavaScript.

Create a New Project

Create an OwnWork application with Composer:

composer create-project dhruv125/ownwork my-app

Then enter the project directory:

cd my-app

Run Setup

Run the setup script:

composer run setup

The setup script performs two operations:

1. Runs composer install to install the project's Composer dependencies.
2. Creates .env from .env.example if .env does not already exist.

The setup command is defined in the project's Composer configuration:

"setup": [
    "composer install",
    "@php -r \"file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
]

Verify the Installation

After setup, the project should contain the Composer autoloader and an environment file:

my-app/
├── .env
├── vendor/
│   └── autoload.php
└── ...

OwnWork's Bundler checks for both .env and vendor/autoload.php before starting the application.

If either is missing, OwnWork stops execution and displays a setup error instructing you to run:

composer run setup

Start the Development Server

The Composer development command starts PHP's built-in development server:

composer run dev

It uses:

• Host: localhost
• Port: 8000
• Document root: public/

The application is therefore available at:

http://localhost:8000

The same server can be started directly through the OwnWork worker:

php worker serve

The worker uses port 8000 by default.

To use another port:

php worker serve 8080

The application will then be available at:

http://localhost:8080

The serve command invokes PHP's built-in server with public/ as the document root.

Optional Node.js Setup

Node.js and npm are optional for the PHP framework itself.

They are used by the project's frontend tooling, including:

• Tailwind CSS development and production builds
• JavaScript bundling through esbuild
• Running the frontend development workflow alongside the PHP server and OwnWork view transpiler

Install the Node dependencies with:

npm install

The project defines the following frontend commands:

npm run tw:dev
npm run tw:build
npm run js:run
npm run js:build

The combined frontend/build workflow is described in the development documentation.

Installation Flow

A basic OwnWork application can therefore be initialized and started with:

composer create-project dhruv125/ownwork my-app
cd my-app
composer run setup
composer run dev

For projects using the frontend tooling, install the Node dependencies separately:

npm install

At runtime, the application starts from public/index.php, which bootstraps OwnWork through its Bundler.