Overview

Zero Framework is a lightweight, native-PHP micro-framework inspired by Laravel's developer experience. It keeps dependencies to a minimum while providing ergonomic tooling for routing, HTTP handling, templating, and database access.

Architecture at a Glance

• Entry point: public/index.php bootstraps configuration, sessions, helpers, and delegates to the router.
• Routing: Zero\Lib\Router maps request URIs to controller actions, manages middleware, and resolves controller dependencies.
• Request lifecycle: Zero\Lib\Http\Request captures query, body, JSON, headers, and files into a reusable object for the duration of the request.
• Request attributes: Middleware can stash data via Request::set() and controllers can read it later with Request::get() or property access on the current instance.
• Response pipeline: Controllers can return any scalar, array, object, or Zero\Lib\Http\Response. The router normalises these via Response::resolve() before sending the payload to the client.
• Views: Zero\Lib\View renders PHP templates with Blade-inspired directives, layout/section support, and optional caching.
• Database access (DBML): Zero\Lib\DB\DBML—the Database Management Layer—provides a fluent query builder atop the framework's PDO bridge.
• Models: Zero\Lib\Model offers an active-record style abstraction that hydrates results into rich PHP objects.
• Helpers: The RegistersHelpers trait (backed by HelperRegistry) wires app-specific helper classes into globally callable functions (generate stubs with php zero make:helper).
• Migrations & Seeders (DBAL): CLI commands (migrate, make:migration, db:seed) drive the migration DBAL for schema changes and database seeding.
• Mailing: Zero\Lib\Mail\Mailer wraps SMTP delivery with fluent message composition and dotenv-driven configuration.
• HTTP Client: Zero\Lib\Http\Http exposes a fluent, cURL-backed client for outbound requests with JSON helpers and timeout configuration.
• String Utilities: Zero\Lib\Support\Str bundles common string transformations (studly, snake, camel, slug, etc.) for CLI and app code.
• Storage: Zero\Lib\Storage\Storage writes files to the configured disks; uploaded files call $file->store() to persist content.

Next Steps

• Explore the request/response lifecycle for details on how input is captured and responses are emitted.
• Review routing to understand grouping, middleware, and parameter binding.
• Dive into DBML for building SQL queries fluently.
• Explore the model layer to work with active-record style objects.
• Review the migrations guide to learn how to shape tables, tweak charset/collation, and modify columns safely.
• Review the CLI tooling for scaffolding, migrations, and seeding workflows.
• Learn how to compose templates in the view layer.
• Review the authentication guide for protecting routes and handling sessions.
• Learn how to send email with the SMTP mailer.
• Browse the CLI reference to discover available tooling.
• Read through the support utilities for the HTTP client and string helper reference.

Deployment

For production configuration, consult docs/deployment for web server examples, environment setup, logging, and post-deploy checklists.