Mini Framework - Documentation

Main Documentation

The primary documentation lives at the project root:

• README.md - Getting started, philosophy, and quick examples
• REFERENCE.md - Complete API reference and function catalog
• PATTERNS.md - Common patterns (service overrides, hooks, output buffering)
• WRITING-DOCUMENTATION.md - Documentation standards and conventions
• CLAUDE.md - Development guide for Claude Code

Tutorials

Step-by-step guides for building applications:

• cli-tools.md - Building command-line tools with argument parsing
• sub-apps.md - Building sub-applications (admin panels, documentation browsers)
• templates.md - Template system with inheritance and blocks
• web-apps.md - Web application patterns

Feature Documentation

Each framework feature has comprehensive documentation in its source directory:

• src/Auth/README.md - Authentication system
• src/Cache/README.md - PSR-16 caching (APCu, SQLite, filesystem)
• src/CLI/README.md - Command-line argument parsing
• src/Controller/README.md - Attribute-based REST controllers
• src/Database/README.md - PDO database abstraction
• src/I18n/README.md - Internationalization and formatting
• src/Logger/README.md - PSR-3 logging
• src/Mailer/README.md - Email sending (Symfony Mailer)
• src/Router/README.md - File-based and pattern routing
• src/UUID/README.md - UUID v4 and v7 generation

Internal Notes

The notes/ directory contains internal design documents, performance analysis, and brainstorming sessions. These are preserved for historical reference but are not official framework documentation:

• notes/CODE-TRANSLATION-APPROACH.md - Swoole compatibility exploration
• notes/SWOOLE-COMPATIBILITY.md - Swoole integration design notes
• notes/SWOOLE-PRACTICAL-APPROACH.md - Practical Swoole implementation ideas
• notes/PHP-RECOMPILE-APPROACH.md - PHP recompilation brainstorming
• notes/PERFORMANCE-ANALYSIS.md - Benchmarking data and analysis
• notes/REAL-WORLD-PERFORMANCE.md - Production performance considerations
• notes/OPTIMIZATION-OPPORTUNITIES.md - Optimization strategy notes
• notes/WHEN-TO-USE-MINI.md - Marketing/positioning draft

These notes are not linked from official documentation and should not be treated as framework guidelines. They serve as source material for future documentation.

Documentation Philosophy

Mini's documentation focuses on:

1. Practical examples - Real-world use cases with working code
2. Complete coverage - Every feature thoroughly documented in its namespace
3. Self-contained - Each README.md stands alone as complete reference
4. No magic - Explicit about how things work under the hood
5. Common tasks first - Most frequent use cases come first

Contributing Documentation

See WRITING-DOCUMENTATION.md for documentation standards, structure, and best practices.