IMI PHP Framework v3.0: Features, Installation, and Why Development Stopped

Termination Notice

On October 13, 2023 the author marked the IMI v3.0 development as terminated.

IMI v3.0 was scheduled to upgrade dependencies, fix design issues, and add new features. Development plan: https://github.com/imiphp/imi/issues/589

Introduction

IMI is a high‑performance PHP framework designed for long‑connection and micro‑service distributed architectures. It runs on various runtimes such as PHP‑FPM, Swoole, Workerman, and RoadRunner, and supports protocols like HttpApi, WebSocket, TCP, UDP, MQTT, making it suitable for micro‑services, instant messaging, and IoT scenarios.

Main Features

Multi‑environment support : compatible with PHP‑FPM, Swoole, Workerman, RoadRunner, etc.

Rich components : built‑in MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, ORM, connection pool, Web API/MVC, gRPC, dependency injection, AOP, events, async queue, cache, scheduled tasks, message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis), Swagger, rate limiting, logging, and more.

Micro‑service ecosystem : integrates Nacos/etcd config center, service registry & discovery, Swoole Tracker, Zipkin/Jaeger tracing, Prometheus/InfluxDB monitoring, load balancing, etc.

Strong extensibility : provides an admin skeleton (imi‑admin) that has been used in tourism e‑commerce, IoT charging cloud, payment micro‑services, and other projects since 2018.

Installation and Usage

Create a project with Composer:

HTTP Server: composer create-project imiphp/project-http:~2.1.0 WebSocket Server: composer create-project imiphp/project-websocket:~2.1.0 TCP Server: composer create-project imiphp/project-tcp:~2.1.0 UDP Server: composer create-project imiphp/project-udp:~2.1.0 gRPC Project: composer create-project imiphp/project-grpc:~2.1.0 MQTT Server: composer create-project imiphp/project-mqtt:~2.1.0 Environment requirements:

Linux system (Swoole does not support Windows).

PHP >= 7.4, Composer >= 2.0.

Swoole >= 4.8.0, Redis and PDO extensions.

Recommended to use the official Swoole Docker image.

Developer manual: detailed documentation at https://doc.imiphp.com/v2.1/ covering quick start, component usage, and advanced development guides.

Community members expressed gratitude for IMI’s contributions to the PHP micro‑service and WebSocket ecosystem since 2018.