Installation

The 6.x major separates the standalone core from the CodeIgniter integration. These instructions cover version 6.0. Local path version overrides below are Composer aliases for testing.

Choose a package

Package	Use	Runtime requirements
daycry/doctrine	Plain PHP or integration into another framework	PHP ^8.5, ORM ^3.7, DBAL ^4.5, Symfony Cache/Console ^8
daycry/doctrine-codeigniter4	CodeIgniter services, config, cache backends, toolbar and Spark	Core ^6.0 and CI4 ^4.7

Composer installs the remaining dependencies, including DoctrineExtensions and JSON DQL functions. The core does not require or boot CodeIgniter at runtime. Redis and Memcached extensions are needed only when using their native backends. Enable the PHP extension for the selected DBAL driver.

Install tagged releases

For the standalone core:

composer require daycry/doctrine:^6.0

For CodeIgniter 4, install the adapter from Packagist:

composer require daycry/doctrine-codeigniter4:^6.0

The adapter also installs the compatible core and framework. No custom Composer repository is required for tagged releases indexed by Packagist.

Install from this checkout

In the consuming application's composer.json, add path repositories pointing to the checkout. Adjust the paths to your directory layout:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../doctrine",
            "options": {"versions": {"daycry/doctrine": "6.0.0"}}
        },
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../doctrine/packages/codeigniter4",
            "options": {"versions": {"daycry/doctrine-codeigniter4": "6.0.0"}}
        }
    ]
}

For standalone use, only the first repository is needed:

composer require daycry/doctrine:^6.0

For CI4, keep both repositories and install the adapter:

composer require daycry/doctrine-codeigniter4:^6.0

The adapter installs the core and framework itself. Path installations depend on the checkout remaining available; use released packages or prepared distributions for deployment.

Standalone bootstrap

Load Composer and construct the core with explicit configuration. No Spark command, framework bootstrap or application constants are needed:

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$config = new \Daycry\Doctrine\Configuration();
$config->connection = ['driver' => 'pdo_sqlite', 'memory' => true];
$doctrine = new \Daycry\Doctrine\Doctrine($config);

echo $doctrine->getEm()->getConnection()->fetchOne('SELECT 1');

For mapped entities, set $config->entities to existing mapping directories before constructing Doctrine. See standalone usage for persistent caches, named managers and a console bootstrap.

CodeIgniter setup

After installing the adapter:

php spark doctrine:publish

This writes app/Config/Doctrine.php and the application-level cli-config.php. The application config extends Daycry\Doctrine\CodeIgniter4\Config\Doctrine and declares only your overrides:

<?php

namespace Config;

class Doctrine extends \Daycry\Doctrine\CodeIgniter4\Config\Doctrine
{
    public array $entities = [APPPATH . 'Models/Entity'];
}

Ensure the mapping directory exists. Connections come from Config\Database and caches from Config\Cache. See configuration and CI4 usage.

The adapter autoloads the namespaced cache helper through Composer:

use function Daycry\Doctrine\CodeIgniter4\Helpers\getFromCacheOrQuery;

The global doctrine_instance() helper is separate: load doctrine_helper through CI4's helper mechanism. The core uses Cache\CacheAside directly.

Deployment and upgrades

Commit the consuming application's lockfile and install with PHP 8.5:

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader --no-interaction

Configure persistent pools before running metadata warmup across processes. Doctor and warmup do not create or migrate database tables. Use the 6.x migration guide when upgrading existing code.