Installation | Phalcon Documentation

Requirements

PHP 7.2

Phalcon v4 supports only PHP 7.2 and above. PHP 7.1 has been released 2 years ago and its active support has lapsed, so we decided to follow actively supported PHP versions. Installing a web server is outside the scope of this document. Please refer to relevant guides on the Internet on how to install a web server.

PSR

Phalcon requires the PSR extension. The extension can be downloaded and compiled from this GitHub repository. Installation instructions are available on the README of the repository. Depending on the installation method you chose, you might need to add a directive in your php.ini so that the PSR extension is loaded.

extension=psr.so

PDO

Since Phalcon is loosely coupled, it exposes functionality without the need for additional extensions. However, certain components rely on additional extensions to work. When in need for database connectivity and access, you will need to install the php_pdo extension. If your RDBMS is MySQL/MariaDB or Aurora, you will need the php_mysqlnd extension also. Similarly, using a PostgreSql database with Phalcon requires the php_pgsql extension.

Load order

Phalcon needs to be loaded after PDO and PSR. Some distributions add a number prefix on ini files. If that is the case, choose a high number for Phalcon (e.g. 50-phalcon.ini), higher than PDO and PSR. This will load it after the two prerequisite extensions. If however, your distribution only has a php.ini file, please make sure that the order is similar to this:

extension=psr.so
extension=phalcon.so

Hardware

Phalcon is designed to use as little resources as possible, while offering high performance. Although we have tested Phalcon in various low end environments, (such as 0.25GB RAM, 0.5 CPU), the hardware that you will choose will depend on the your application needs.

We have hosted our website and blog for the last few years on an Amazon VM with 512MB RAM and 1 vCPU.

Software

Along with PHP 7.2 or greater, depending on your application needs and the Phalcon components you need, you might need to install the following extensions:

curl
fileinfo
gettext
gd2 (to use the Phalcon\Image\Adapter\Gd class)
imagick (to use the Phalcon\Image\Adapter\Imagick class)
json
libpcre3-dev (Debian/Ubuntu), pcre-devel (CentOS), pcre (macOS)
PDO Extension as well as the relevant RDBMS specific extension (i.e. MySQL, PostgreSql etc.)
OpenSSL Extension
Mbstring Extension
Memcached or other relevant cache adapters depending on your usage of cache

For the libpcre3-dev package you can use the following commands:

Pecl

The Pecl installation method is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS. Under windows pre-compiled dll files will be used. Under Linux and MacOS it will compile Phalcon locally so it could be faster to use a different installation method on these platforms. To install using Pecl make sure you have pecl/pear installed.

pecl channel-update pecl.php.net
pecl install phalcon

Debian

sudo apt-get install libpcre3-dev

and then try and install Phalcon again

CentOS

sudo yum install pcre-devel

Mac/Osx using Brew

brew install pcre

Without brew, you need to go to the PCRE website and download the latest pcre:

tar -xzvf pcre-8.42.tar.gz
cd pcre-8.42
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/pcre-8.42
make
make install
ln -s /usr/local/pcre-8.42 /usr/sbin/pcre
ln -s /usr/local/pcre-8.42/include/pcre.h /usr/include/pcre.h

For Maverick

brew install pcre

if it gives you error, you can use

sudo ln -s /opt/local/include/pcre.h /usr/include/
sudo pecl install apc

Installation Platforms

Since Phalcon is compiled as a PHP extension, its installation is somewhat different than any other traditional PHP framework. Phalcon needs to be installed and loaded as a module on your web server.

Linux

To install Phalcon on Linux, you will need to add our repository in your distribution and then install it.

DEB Based Distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Etc.)

Repository installation

Add the repository to your distribution:

Stable releases

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/stable/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

Nightly releases

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/nightly/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

Mainline releases (alpha, beta etc.)

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/mainline/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

Phalcon installation

To install Phalcon you need to type the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php7.2-phalcon

Additional PPAs

Ondřej Surý

If you do not wish to use our repository at packagecloud.io, you can always use the one offered by Ondřej Surý.

Installation of the repo:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update

and Phalcon:

sudo apt-get install php-phalcon4

RPM Based Distributions (CentOS, Fedora, Etc.)

Repository installation

Add the repository to your distribution:

Stable releases

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/stable/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

Nightly releases

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/nightly/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

Mainline releases (alpha, beta etc.)

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/phalcon/mainline/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

Phalcon installation

To install Phalcon you need to issue the following commands in your terminal:

sudo yum update
sudo yum install php72u-phalcon

Additional RPMs

Remi

Remi Collet maintains an excellent repository for RPM based installations. You can find instructions on how to enable it for your distribution here.

Installing Phalcon after that is as easy as:

yum install php72-php-phalcon4

Additional versions are available both architecture specific (x86/x64) as well as PHP version specific

FreeBSD

Binary package (pkg) and compile myself from source (ports) are available for FreeBSD. To install it you will need to issue the following commands:

pkg

pkg install php74-phalcon4

ports

cd /usr/ports/www/phalcon4

make install clean

Gentoo

An overlay for installing Phalcon can be found here

Raspberry Pi

sudo -s
git clone https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon
cd cphalcon/
git checkout tags/v4.0.0 ./
zephir fullclean
zephir build

It is also necessary to increase the swap file from the default 100 MB to at least 2000 MB. Because, the compiler lacks RAM.

sudo -s
nano /etc/dphys-swapfile

Replacing CONF_SWAPSIZE=100 with CONF_SWAPSIZE=2000

After saving the setting, restart the daemon:

/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start

macOS

Brew includes binary packages so you don’t need to compile Phalcon yourself. If you want to compile the extension yourself you need the following dependencies installed:

Compilation requirements

PHP 7.x development resources
XCode

Brew

Binary installation (preferred):

brew tap phalcon/extension https://github.com/phalcon/homebrew-tap
brew install phalcon

Compile phalcon:

brew tap phalcon/extension https://github.com/phalcon/homebrew-tap
brew install phalcon --build-from-source

MacPorts

sudo port install php72-phalcon
sudo port install php73-phalcon

Edit your php.ini file and then append at the end:

extension=php_phalcon.so

Restart your webserver.

PHPBrew (macOS/Linux)

PHPBrew is an excellent way to manage multiple versions of PHP and PHP extensions on your system(s). Installation instructions for PHPBrew can be found here

If you’re using PHPBrew, you can install Phalcon using the following:

sudo phpbrew ext install phalcon

You can install the PSR dependency via phpbrew as well if needed:

sudo phpbrew ext install psr

Windows

To use Phalcon on Windows, you will need to install the phalcon.dll. We have compiled several DLLs depending on the target platform. The DLLs can be found in our download page.

Identify your PHP installation as well as architecture. If you download the wrong DLL, Phalcon will not work. phpinfo() contains this information. In the example below, we will need the NTS version of the DLL:

phpinfo

The available DLLs are:

Architecture	Version	Type
x64	7.x	Thread safe
x64	7.x	Non Thread safe (NTS)
x86	7.x	Thread safe
x86	7.x	Non Thread safe (NTS)

Edit your php.ini file and then append at the end:

extension=php_phalcon.dll

Restart your webserver.

Compile From Sources

Compiling from source is similar to most environments (Linux/macOS).

Requirements

PHP 7.2.x/7.3.x development resources
GCC compiler (Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD) or Xcode (macOS)
re2c >= 0.13
libpcre-dev

Compilation

Download the latest zephir.phar from here. Add it to a folder that can be accessed by your system.

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon

Compile Phalcon

cd cphalcon/
git checkout tags/v4.0.0 ./
zephir fullclean
zephir build

Check the module

php -m | grep phalcon

You will now need to add extension=phalcon.so to your PHP ini and restart your web server, so as to load the extension.

; Suse: Add a File Called Phalcon.ini in /etc/php7/conf.d/ with This Content:
extension=phalcon.so

; CentOS/RedHat/Fedora: Add a File Called Phalcon.ini in /etc/php.d/ with This Content:
extension=phalcon.so

; Ubuntu/Debian with Apache2: Add a File Called 30-phalcon.ini in /etc/php7/apache2/conf.d/ with This Content:
extension=phalcon.so

; Ubuntu/Debian with Php7-fpm: Add a File Called 30-phalcon.ini in /etc/php7/fpm/conf.d/ with This Content:
extension=phalcon.so

; Ubuntu/Debian with Php7-cli: Add a File Called 30-phalcon.ini in /etc/php7/cli/conf.d/ with This Content:
extension=phalcon.so

The instructions above will compile and install the module on your system. You can also compile the extension and then add it manually in your ini file:

cd cphalcon/
git checkout tags/v4.0.0 ./
zephir fullclean
zephir compile
cd ext
phpize
./configure
make && make install

If you use the above method you will need to add the extension=phalcon.so in your php.ini both for CLI and web server.

Tuning Build

By default we compile to be as compatible as possible with all processors (gcc -mtune=native -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer). If you would like instruct the compiler to generate optimized machine code that matches the processor where it is currently running on you can set your own compile flags by exporting CFLAGS before the build. For example

export CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer"
zephir build

This will generate the best possible code for that chipset but will likely break the compiled object on older chipsets.

Shared Hosting

Running your application on shared hosting might restrict you in installing Phalcon, especially if you do not have root access. Some web hosting control panels luckily have Phalcon support.

cPanel & WHM

cPanel & WHM support Phalcon using Easy Apache 4 (EA4). You can install Phalcon by enabling the module in Easy Apache 4 (EA4).

Plesk

The plesk control panel doesn’t have Phalcon support but you can find installation instructions on the Plesk website