Lumen

Lumen is a PHP micro-framework that is fast, lightweight, and designed for building RESTful APIs and web applications. It is a derivative of Laravel, another popular PHP framework, but with an emphasis on speed and minimalism.

Features

Lumen includes many of the features that make Laravel such a popular framework, including:

• Eloquent ORM for database management
• Blade templating engine for views
• Artisan command-line tool for management and code generation
• Middleware for request handling and data modification
• CSRF protection for security

Additionally, Lumen has some features specifically geared towards building RESTful APIs, such as built-in support for API authentication, rate limiting, and output formatting.

Installation

Lumen can be installed via Composer, a PHP package manager. First, create a new Lumen project with the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/lumen project-name

This will create a new Lumen project with the default structure and dependencies. From there, you can use the built-in development server php -S localhost:8000 -t public to start a local server for testing and development.

Usage

Lumen follows the standard MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture for building web applications. The routes and controllers are defined in the routes/web.php file, and the views are stored in the resources/views directory.

Here's an example route definition that responds to a GET request for the root URL:

$app->get('/', function () use ($app) {
    return view('welcome');
});

This route maps the root URL to a function that returns the welcome.blade.php view.

Conclusion

Lumen is a powerful and lightweight PHP micro-framework for building RESTful APIs and web applications. It is fast, easy to learn, and provides many of the features and tools needed for modern web development. Whether you are a seasoned PHP developer or just getting started, Lumen is definitely worth checking out.