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baileyherbert/horizon
=====================

Framework for building distributed web applications that need to work on most servers.

1.0.1(2y ago)0205[4 issues](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/issues)[1 PRs](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/pulls)MITPHPPHP >=5.6.0CI passing

Since Mar 5Pushed 1mo ago1 watchersCompare

[ Source](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon)[ Packagist](https://packagist.org/packages/baileyherbert/horizon)[ RSS](/packages/baileyherbert-horizon/feed)WikiDiscussions master Synced 1mo ago

READMEChangelog (2)Dependencies (11)Versions (4)Used By (0)

 [![Illustration of sun behind mountains](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/adc9f44788c5174768c2f2d232f150fcf4dad603334150102607dae79e2a408e/68747470733a2f2f692e6261696c65792e73682f4a6a6e6d444c582e706e67)](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/adc9f44788c5174768c2f2d232f150fcf4dad603334150102607dae79e2a408e/68747470733a2f2f692e6261696c65792e73682f4a6a6e6d444c582e706e67)

 [github](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon) / [packagist](https://packagist.org/packages/baileyherbert/horizon) / [documentation](https://docs.bailey.sh/horizon/latest/)

Horizon Framework
=================

[](#horizon-framework)

Introduction
------------

[](#introduction)

Horizon is a PHP web application framework largely inspired by Laravel 5. It was designed from the ground up to work on nearly all web servers, while offering most of the same features and a familiar development experience.

Horizon is a great fit for distributed web applications, and works wonderfully on shared hosting. With no strict extension requirements, support for older PHP versions, dynamic subdirectory support, and automatic legacy routing, it can run pretty much anywhere.

Quick start
-----------

[](#quick-start)

There are two starter templates in this repository to get up and running quickly. Though they share the same core framework, each template has been configured and structured differently to meet user requirements.

- **[Dedicated](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/tree/master/starters/dedicated)** – A template for private projects where you control the environment or run in Docker.
- **[Shared](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/tree/master/starters/shared)** – A template for distributed projects where you don't control the environment.

Features
--------

[](#features)

Horizon is a full-fledged framework built to run where other frameworks won't.

- **Database ORM** (with query building, models, and relationships)
- **Database migrations** (with an elegant schema builder)
- **Routing** (with fallback routing and plenty of configurability)
- **Views** (with a blade-like twig syntax, and reusable components)
- **Translations** (with optional automatic view translation)
- **Console** (with the [`ace`](https://packagist.org/packages/baileyherbert/ace) tool, custom commands, and invocation from code)

Server requirements
-------------------

[](#server-requirements)

### Hard requirements

[](#hard-requirements)

Horizon was built to work just about anywhere. A critical part of this goal was to minimize its server requirements. There are just a couple hard requirements:

- Horizon **requires** running on a webserver with PHP 5.6 or above.
- Horizon **requires** one of the following extensions when using databases.
    1. `pdo_mysql`
    2. `mysqli`
    3. `mysqlnd`
    4. `mysql`

### Recommendations

[](#recommendations)

Horizon will use polyfills or fallback implementations when certain useful extensions are missing. For the best possible runtime experience, the following additional features are strongly recommended:

- Horizon **recommends** running on a webserver that supports `.htaccess` files.
- Horizon **recommends** running on a webserver that supports rewrite rules.
- Horizon **recommends** the `mbstring` and `openssl` extensions.

### Shared hosting

[](#shared-hosting)

Horizon's [shared template](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/tree/master/starters/shared) was designed to automatically work on shared hosting without any additional configuration or effort from users.

- Horizon can run in a subdirectory. Links, redirects, and asset paths will be adjusted automatically.
- Horizon can run without rewrite rules. It will fall back to using `.php` route files instead.

License
-------

[](#license)

[MIT](https://github.com/baileyherbert/horizon/blob/master/LICENSE.md)

###  Health Score

31

—

LowBetter than 68% of packages

Maintenance59

Moderate activity, may be stable

Popularity11

Limited adoption so far

Community9

Small or concentrated contributor base

Maturity38

Early-stage or recently created project

 Bus Factor1

Top contributor holds 99.7% of commits — single point of failure

How is this calculated?**Maintenance (25%)** — Last commit recency, latest release date, and issue-to-star ratio. Uses a 2-year decay window.

**Popularity (30%)** — Total and monthly downloads, GitHub stars, and forks. Logarithmic scaling prevents top-heavy scores.

**Community (15%)** — Contributors, dependents, forks, watchers, and maintainers. Measures real ecosystem engagement.

**Maturity (30%)** — Project age, version count, PHP version support, and release stability.

###  Release Activity

Cadence

Every ~36 days

Total

2

Last Release

764d ago

### Community

Maintainers

![](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/9532377?v=4)[baileyherbert](/maintainers/baileyherbert)[@baileyherbert](https://github.com/baileyherbert)

---

Top Contributors

[![baileyherbert](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/9532377?v=4)](https://github.com/baileyherbert "baileyherbert (387 commits)")[![dependabot[bot]](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/29110?v=4)](https://github.com/dependabot[bot] "dependabot[bot] (1 commits)")

### Embed Badge

![Health badge](/badges/baileyherbert-horizon/health.svg)

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```

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