CodeIgniter 4.6.5 — WSC2026

A real CodeIgniter 4.6.5 application (WorldSkills 2026 Web Technologies, TP17) backed by MySQL — the same engine the deployed app uses, so what works locally works there. On start it applies the migrations, then serves.

Run it

cp .env.example .env
docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost. docker compose starts a MySQL server alongside the app, using the credentials from your .env. Stop with docker compose down.

Checking the connection

curl -fsS http://localhost/api/db-check

{ "ok": true, "driver": "mysql", "host": "db", "port": 3306, "database": "app",
  "user": "app", "server_version": "8.4.11", "latency_ms": 1,
  "demo_table": "ci_visitors present" }

It returns 503 when the connection fails, naming the host, database and user it tried plus the driver's message — "Access denied" for wrong credentials, "connection refused" for a wrong host. The password is never in the response. Every WSC2026 template answers the same check, so one command works whatever stack you chose.

The endpoint is app/Controllers/DbCheck.php, routed in app/Config/Routes.php.

Configuration

The database connection lives in two files and nowhere else — not in app/Config/Database.php, the Dockerfile or docker-compose.yml:

File	Used for	In git?
.env	your local development database	No — gitignored
.env.prod	the deployed app; the platform fills in your credentials	Yes

The entrypoint copies .env.prod over .env on every start, so a deployed container always runs the deployed configuration. docker compose passes your local values as environment variables instead, so local development never edits the deployment's file.

Injected environment variables

CodeIgniter's env() helper reads $_ENV before the real environment, and its DotEnv loader copies every key from .env into $_ENV — including empty ones. An empty database.default.hostname = in the shipped .env therefore shadows a hostname injected by docker-compose or Kubernetes, and the app reports "not configured" while the value sits in its environment.

docker/sync-env.php, run by the entrypoint, writes any injected CI_ENVIRONMENT/app.*/ database.default.* variables into .env first, so injected values win.

Develop

The simplest loop is Docker: edit the source, then rebuild:

cp .env.example .env
docker compose up --build

Edit app/Controllers/ and app/Views/ to change routes, controllers and views.

To run it natively instead you need PHP 8.3 (with mysqli), Composer 2.9.5 and a MySQL server of your own. Then:

cp .env.example .env    # point database.default.hostname at your server
composer install
php spark migrate --all
php spark serve

The database is shared

Every project you create points at the same MySQL database, so it already contains other projects' tables. This template's demo table is called ci_visitors, not visitors, so it cannot collide. Keep a prefix of your own per project — app/Config/Database.php also has a DBPrefix setting that applies one to every table at once.

Stack

• PHP 8.3 / Composer 2.9.5 (mysqli + pdo_mysql; pdo_sqlite also available)
• CodeIgniter 4.6.5
• MySQL 8.4 (started by docker compose)