A general-purpose headless platform built on top of Mezzio microframework using Laminas components
Designed for
Control, Scalability & Performance
Dotkernel is a collection of middleware applications (skeletons),
using PSR-7 (HTTP Messages)
and PSR-15 (HTTP Request Handlers) specifications
Headless Platform
* API
* ADMIN
PHP
Packagist
Dotkernel Admin is an application (skeleton) intended for quickly setting up an administration site for your platform. It's a fast and reliable way to manage records in your database with a simple table-based approach, and also to build reports and graphs to monitor your platform.
* LIGHT
PHP
Packagist
Dotkernel Light is a PSR-15 compliant application (skeleton) using Mezzio microframework and Laminas components. It’s designed as a minimal project to generate a simple website, like a presentation site.
* FRONTEND
PHP
Packagist
Dotkernel Frontend is an application (skeleton) based on Mezzio microframework using Laminas components. It’s designed as a web starter package suitable for frontend applications.
* QUEUE
PHP
N/A
Packagist
N/A
Dotkernel Queue is a queue management project, based on Mezzio, Symfony messenger and Swoole.
Extending the power of
Mezzio
Containers
Dotkernel is built around the PSR-11 dependency container. We have chosen Laminas Service Manager as our default implementation.
Get Started with
Templating
By default, no middleware in Mezzio is templated. For Dotkernel’s Frontend skeleton, we have chosen Twig as the default templating engine.
Get started with
HTTP messages
Mezzio, and consequently Dotkernel, is built around the PSR-7 standard. It uses Laminas Diactoros as the PSR-7 implementation.HTTP Request Handlers
Dotkernel follows the PSR-15 (HTTP Request Handlers) specifications, by implementing the laminas-httphandlerrunner package.
Get started with
Database and object mapping
The Doctrine Project’s PHP libraries with their flexible and stable features are at the core of our database storage and object mapping.
Get started with
Doctrine Orm and DBAL
Dotkernel
Components
Authentication
- dot-authentication
core authentication interfaces - dot-auth-social
wrapper for thephpleague/oauth2-client to authenticate users though Facebook
Authorization
- dot-authorization
core authorization interfaces - dot-rbac
RBAC authorization implementation - dot-rbac-guard
RBAC for authorizing sections of an application
Controllers
- dot-controller
controller-like middleware for mezzio
Forms
laminas-form
validate and display forms
Session
- dot-session
extends laminas-session - dot-flashmessenger
short lived session messages - dot-cache
extends symfony/cache
Logging and error handling
Emailing
- dot-mail
extends symfony/mailer
Backend abstraction (database)
- doctrine/orm
object-relational-mapper for PHP - doctrine/dbal
database abstraction layer with features for database schema introspection and management - dot-data-fixtures
extends doctrine/data-fixtures to populate tables
Navigation
- dot-navigation
easy menu configuration and parsing
Template engine
- dot-twigrenderer
extend the twig renderer with useful extensions and laminas-view helpers
Tools
- dot-annotated-services
create and inject services with dependecies through annotations - dot-event
extends laminas-eventmanager - dot-helpers
- dot-cli
extends laminas-cli for building console applications - dot-doctrine-metadata
extends mezzio/mezzio-hal for extracting and rendering Doctrine entities - dot-response-header
middleware for setting and overwriting custom response headers
Extra libraries
- dot-user-agent-sniffer
provides details about a device by parsing a user agent - dot-debugbar
extends maximebf/php-debugbar to collect session data, log messages, debug database queries etc. - dot-geoip
extends maxmind/GeoIP2-php to provide geographical details about an IP address
Blog posts
Useful reads
- Dotkernel Headless Platform – The Whats, Hows and WhysJune 13, 2025The principle of a Headless Platform is to decouple the User Interface (frontend) from the backend […]
- Understanding MiddlewareMay 22, 2025Middleware is code that exists between the request and response, and which can take the incoming […]
- Dotkernel Light improvements: PSR-15 Handlers, Vite, PHPStanMay 2, 2025Dotkernel Light is a PSR-15 compliant application that uses the Mezzio microframework and Laminas […]
Designed and built by Apidemia
Control, Scalability & Performance
Dotkernel is an Open Source project created and led by the dev team @Apidemia, initially as an internal tool to handle complex architectures, now freely open, our way of giving back to the community.