¤ A toolkit?
This statement by the main author of PHP is quite enlightening and relevant.
HelPHP is a toolkit, although being a complete solution that is sufficient for itself, you are not obliged to use all its components (librairies, modules, utilities).
You can just use what you need to create "shortcuts" in your development.
The components are written for PHP 8.X and Javascript (Ecma6+) and do not constitute a new "language", nor do they require anything other than a classic LAMP environment.
Where did they come from?
¤ History
Every developer finds it tedious to write the same code constantly, so it is natural to try to limit these repetitions.
Two ways are possible:
- Use a framework that gives you a first-hand solution, but this creates a risk of dependency, and difficulties in adapting to the project or "surprise" needs that the client might ask for.
- Second possibility, every time you develop a piece of code, capitalize it: Make it an easy to reuse component... It is obviously very long to arrive at a solution covering all the projects needs, but this to the advantage (among other things) of not creating a dead end and mastering all the code, remaining in pure PHP / Javascript.
We made the second choice and for almost 20 years we created components that were used and improved on thousands of projects.
At the end of 2023, it was decided to rewrite and modernize the code (some parts were running on Netscape!) but also to make it an open source version: helpPHP!
¤ Why?
helPHP has reached maturity, it already allows a lot (and many modules are still to come, we haven't rewritten everything yet!), and to make it evolve we have to confront it with new situations.
For example, we haven't had a security issue with helPHP during 15 years! Okay, but did we think about everything?
There is no perfect solution! There are necessarily incongruous cases that may have escaped us! Same for all other subjects!
It is therefore necessary to have another opinion if progress is to be made.
As any developer we have also learned a lot through the sharing of the open-source community, and it is important to support this community, sharing the helPHP code and the (sometimes new) solutions it contains is our contribution.
HelPHP was unveiled in early 2026, and we still have a lot of ideas to implement to enrich it, by soliciting the community, we hope to create a dynamic that also strengthens us!
One of the quality of helPHP is to be very economical in machine resource, therefore less energy consuming, allowing to run more projects with less machine, in short it can help to reduce the ecological cost in a significant way (and it is more than necessary now)!
Here are the main reasons for this project, but helpPHP also offers
other benefits.
