Setup Phalcon

Setup Phalcon

This example creates a Phalcon 5 application inside Devilbox and links its public/ directory to the virtual host document root.

Overview

Project name	Container path	Database	TLD_SUFFIX	Project URL
my-phalcon	/shared/httpd/my-phalcon	optional	lvh.me	http://my-phalcon.lvh.me / https://my-phalcon.lvh.me

Projects live in /shared/httpd/ inside the PHP container and in ./data/www/ on the host.

Prerequisites

• Devilbox with PHP 8.3 or PHP 8.4 available.
• A PHP container image or project setup that includes the Phalcon extension and Phalcon Developer Tools for Phalcon 5.
• HTTPD and Bind services.

Start the stack:

./dvl.sh up php httpd bind

Caution

Phalcon requires a PHP extension, not only Composer packages. Confirm php -m | grep phalcon inside the selected PHP container before generating the project.

Walk through

It will be ready in seven steps:

1. Enter the PHP container.
2. Create a new virtual host directory.
3. Check Phalcon tooling.
4. Create the Phalcon project.
5. Link public/ to htdocs.
6. Verify DNS.
7. Open the project.

1. Enter the PHP container

./dvl.sh shell php83

2. Create the vhost directory

mkdir -p /shared/httpd/my-phalcon
cd /shared/httpd/my-phalcon

3. Check Phalcon tooling

php -m | grep -i phalcon
phalcon --version

Install or enable the extension and developer tools if those checks fail.

4. Create the Phalcon project

phalcon project phalconphp

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
└── phalconphp

5. Link the webroot

ln -s phalconphp/public htdocs

6. Verify DNS

my-phalcon.lvh.me resolves to localhost with the default suffix. For another suffix, add a hosts-file entry.

7. Open your browser

Visit http://my-phalcon.lvh.me or https://my-phalcon.lvh.me.

Nginx routing note

If routes fail under Nginx, create data/www/my-phalcon/.devilbox/nginx.yml from cfg/vhost-gen/nginx.yml-example-vhost and adapt the try_files rule for Phalcon:

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?_url=$uri&$args;

Validate the YAML before restarting:

yamllint data/www/my-phalcon/.devilbox/nginx.yml

Restart with:

./dvl.sh restart

Next steps

• Add MySQL or Redis only if the generated application needs them.
• Configure HTTPS trust for browser testing.
• Use ./dvl.sh exec "php -m" for quick extension checks.