thelia is a free, open source e-commerce platforms project written in PHP and released under GPL-3.0. It has 878 GitHub stars, 318 forks and 19 open issues, and was last pushed 35 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #37 of 44 tracked projects in E-commerce Platforms, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

Thelia

tests PHPStan stable PHP Symfony API Platform license docs stars contributors last commit code quality

This is the development repository of Thelia, the open source e-commerce framework. Work on Thelia itself here.

To create a shop, use the project skeleton instead: thelia/thelia-project.

About

Thelia is an open source framework for building online stores and managing web content. Version 3 runs on:

  • PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5
  • Symfony 7.4 LTS
  • API Platform 4.3 (standalone)
  • Propel ORM
  • A Twig front office (the Flexy theme) and a Twig back office (the default-twig theme)
  • Lexik JWT for API authentication

The back office and front office are built with Twig, Symfony UX (Stimulus, Twig Components and Live Components) and Bootstrap 5. The Smarty back office from Thelia 2 is still available for projects that need it while they migrate. See "Back-office templates" below.

Thelia is open source software. See the LICENSE file for details.

Requirements

Requirement Supported
PHP 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5 (8.3 recommended)
Database MariaDB 10.11 or later (recommended), or MySQL 8.x
PHP extensions pdo_mysql, openssl, intl, gd, curl, dom, mbstring, zip
Composer 2.7 or later
Web server Nginx or Apache, document root set to public/

How long each release series receives security fixes is listed in SECURITY.md.

Setting up a development environment

The repository does not ship a Docker setup. The maintainers use DDEV, which provides PHP 8.3, MariaDB 10.11 and Node.js 20 in one command. Any equivalent stack works: point your web server at public/ and use the same PHP 8.3 binary for the command line and the web server.

ddev config --project-type=php --php-version=8.3 --database=mariadb:10.11 --docroot=public --nodejs-version=20
ddev start
ddev exec composer install

Install Thelia

bin/install reads its database credentials from the DATABASE_HOST, DATABASE_PORT, DATABASE_NAME, DATABASE_USER and DATABASE_PASSWORD environment variables, or from command-line flags. With DDEV the database is reachable as db:3306, user db, password db:

ddev exec bin/install \
  --frontoffice_theme=flexy --backoffice_theme=default-twig \
  --pdf_theme=default --email_theme=default \
  --with-demo --with-admin \
  --admin_login=thelia --admin_password=thelia \
  --admin_first_name=Admin --admin_last_name=User \
  [email protected]

Without DDEV, export the database variables (or put them in .env.local) and run php bin/install with the same flags.

Build the assets

bin/install compiles all the assets itself: it runs importmap:install and tailwind:build for the active front-office theme, and sass:build for the back-office stylesheet. To rebuild them later, run the same commands from the application root:

ddev exec php bin/console importmap:install   # front-office JavaScript dependencies
ddev exec php bin/console tailwind:build      # front-office stylesheet (Flexy)
ddev exec php bin/console sass:build          # back-office stylesheet (default-twig)

The storefront is then at https://.ddev.site and the admin at https://.ddev.site/admin.

Back-office templates

Thelia 3 installs the Twig back office (default-twig) by default. The Smarty back office (templates/backOffice/default/) stays available so projects migrating from Thelia 2 can keep modules that target it. You can install both at once and switch the active one:

ddev exec bin/console template:set backOffice default-twig   # or: default

If you maintain a module, the migration guide is at .

Tests and quality

ddev exec composer test       # PHPUnit test suites
ddev exec composer cs-diff    # coding standard (php-cs-fixer)
ddev exec composer phpstan    # static analysis

How the packages fit together

Several packages are split out of this repository: thelia/core, thelia/config and thelia/setup. Modules live under thelia-modules, and the Flexy front-office theme is in thelia/Flexy.

Contributing

Pull requests go to this repository. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the coding standard and the test workflow.

Community

  • Documentation:
  • Website:
  • Discord:
  • Forum:

Frequently asked questions

Is thelia free to use?

thelia is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does thelia do?

Thelia is an open-source e-commerce CMS and framework built on Symfony 7 and API Platform.

What is thelia written in?

thelia is primarily written in PHP. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/thelia/thelia, and it has 878 GitHub stars.