Larafony 2.0 – free* course updated to PHP 8.5

You can learn from the extensive README repository github.com/DJWeb-Damian-Jozwiak/larafony .
But if you want to understand each element step by step – check out the full PHP 8.5 course as an ebook 📚, where I explain everything in detail.

We don't need another tutorial boilerplate. We need tools for real work. That's why Larafony was created – a combination of Laravel's elegance, Symfony's reliability, and the power of modern PHP 8.5. Not as a package, but as a full-fledged production framework.

Version 2.0 is not just PHP 8.5 compatibility (pipe operator, array_first/last, fatal error backtraces), but also a complete refactor of key components: Clock, HTTP Kernel, Routing, and ORM. Everything described step by step in the Larafony course chapters.

1. Clock – PSR-20 Time Handling (Chapter 3)

Instead of Carbon or DateTime, Larafony relies on pure PSR-20 with full support for testability and mocking.

<?php
use Larafony\Clock\SystemClock;
use Larafony\Clock\FrozenClock;

$clock = new SystemClock();
echo $clock->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

$testClock = FrozenClock::fromString('2025-10-21 12:00:00');
$testClock->advance('+1 hour');

Comparison: Larafony vs Carbon vs Symfony Clock

2. HTTP Kernel and Routing – PSR-7/15 (Chapters 5 and 15)

Larafony uses attribute-based routing and a full PSR-7/15 stack instead of Laravel's magic or Symfony's heavy config. Every controller is a pure PHP object.

<?php
use Larafony\Routing\Attribute\Route;
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;

#[RouteGroup('blog')]
final class BlogController
{
    #[Route('/posts/<id:\d+>', 'GET', name: 'posts.show')]
    public function show(
        ServerRequestInterface $request,
        #[RouteParam(model: Post::class, findMethod: 'findOrFail')]
        Post $post
    ): ResponseInterface
    {
        // $post is automatically fetched from database
        // Throws 404 if not found (using findOrFail)
        return $this->json(['post' => $post]);
    }

    #[Route('/posts/<slug:[a-z-]+>', 'GET', name: 'posts.by-slug')]
    public function showBySlug(
        ServerRequestInterface $request,
        #[RouteParam(model: Post::class, findMethod: 'findBySlug')]
        Post $post
    ): ResponseInterface
    {
        // Uses custom finder method
        return $this->json(['post' => $post]);
    }
}

Routing and Middleware Comparison

3. ORM with Property Observers (Chapter 13)

Larafony's ORM is a hybrid of ActiveRecord and EntityFramework – full property change tracking thanks to PHP 8.5 property hooks.

<?php
class Post extends Model
{
    public string $table { get => 'posts'; }

    public ?string $title {
        get => $this->title;
        set {
            $this->title = $value;
            $this->markPropertyAsChanged('title');
        }
    }

    #[BelongsTo(related: User::class, foreignKey: 'user_id', ownerKey: 'id')]
    public ?BelongsToRelation $user {
        get => $this->relations->get('user');
    }

    public ?int $user_id {
        get => $this->user_id;
        set {
            $this->user_id = $value;
            $this->markPropertyAsChanged('user_id');
        }
    }
}

ORM Comparison – Larafony vs Eloquent vs Doctrine vs .NET EF

4. PHP 8.5 Features in Practice

Thanks to the pipe operator (|>) and array_first()/array_last() functions, Larafony code is shorter and more readable:

$title = $request->input('title')
    |> trim(...)
    |> strtolower(...)
    |> (static fn(string $t) => ucfirst($t));

$user = $users
    |> (static fn($data) => array_filter($data, static fn($u) => $u['active']))
    |> (static fn($data) => array_first($data));

5. Summary

Larafony 2.0 is a framework for those who appreciate Laravel's simplicity, Symfony's robustness, and PHP 8.5's modernity – without unnecessary overhead. This is code written for production, and the course is its open documentation.

Larafony 1.0 (known as the "PHP course") used Carbon, Twig, Faker, Symfony VarDumper, and Symfony Mailer. Larafony 2.0 will probably use Symfony Mailer (though I might implement emails from scratch) and Twig (as an optional package in a separate repository – not required by the main framework). Thanks to this, we can consider Larafony 2.0 a zero-dependency framework (PSR only).

🔗 Repository (PHP8.5): github.com/DJWeb-Damian-Jozwiak/larafony 🔗 Repository (PHP8.4): github.com/DJWeb-Damian-Jozwiak/book