cakephp/app

CakePHP skeleton app

5.3.1 2026-02-12 16:28 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.2
• cakephp/cakephp: 5.3.*
• cakephp/migrations: ^5.0
• cakephp/plugin-installer: ^2.0
• mobiledetect/mobiledetectlib: ^4.8.03

Requires (Dev)

• cakephp/bake: ^3.6
• cakephp/cakephp-codesniffer: ^5.3
• cakephp/debug_kit: ^5.2
• josegonzalez/dotenv: ^4.0
• phpunit/phpunit: ^11.5.3 || ^12.1.3 || ^13.0

Suggests

• cakephp/repl: Console tools for a REPL interface for CakePHP applications.
• dereuromark/cakephp-ide-helper: After baking your code, this keeps your annotations in sync with the code evolving from there on for maximum IDE and PHPStan/Psalm compatibility.
• markstory/asset_compress: An asset compression plugin which provides file concatenation and a flexible filter system for preprocessing and minification.
• phpstan/phpstan: PHPStan focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it. It catches whole classes of bugs even before you write tests for the code.

MIT

README

A skeleton for creating applications with CakePHP 5.x.

The framework source code can be found here: cakephp/cakephp.

Installation

1. Download Composer or update composer self-update.
2. Run php composer.phar create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app [app_name].

If Composer is installed globally, run

composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app

In case you want to use a custom app dir name (e.g. /myapp/):

composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app myapp

You can now either use your machine's webserver to view the default home page, or start up the built-in webserver with:

bin/cake server -p 8765

Then visit http://localhost:8765 to see the welcome page.

Demo app

Check out the 5.x-demo branch, which contains demo migrations and a seeder. See the README on how to get it running.

Update

Since this skeleton is a starting point for your application and various files would have been modified as per your needs, there isn't a way to provide automated upgrades, so you have to do any updates manually.

Configuration

Read and edit the environment specific config/app_local.php and set up the 'Datasources' and any other configuration relevant for your application. Other environment agnostic settings can be changed in config/app.php.

Layout

The app skeleton uses Milligram (v1.3) minimalist CSS framework by default. You can, however, replace it with any other library or custom styles.