I am clicalmani, a PHP developer since 2010, and I deeply believe that an ideal PHP framework can exist.

After years working with CodeIgniter, Laravel, and Symfony, I decided to build my own vision:

Tonka — a framework that combines:

• 🏗️ The architectural rigor of Symfony
• ✨ The elegance and developer experience of Laravel
• 🚀 Modern tooling built for today's applications
• 🔒 A production-ready, secure, and scalable foundation

For years, PHP developers had to choose between:

Tonka was born from this conviction:

• ✅ Complete like Symfony: Dependency Injection, events, messenger, scheduler, mailer, and more.
• ✅ Elegant like Laravel: Clean, expressive syntax that makes writing code a joy.
• ✅ Modern: Harnessing modern PHP, monolith capabilities, advanced ORM, and seamless data integration.
• ✅ Production Ready: Built on battle-tested components, security-first design, and scalability.

The name Tonka originates from my native language and translates to "delicious".

Something you love doing all the time without ever feeling like it's work — pure passion and excitement.

• 2010: Official journey with PHP began, learning through tutorials and technical books.

• 2010s+: Deep exploration of PHP frameworks:

• CodeIgniter → First steps in MVC.

• Laravel → Elegance and developer experience.

• Symfony → Architectural excellence.

• Today: Creating and scaling Tonka.

📚 Books that inspired me along the way: Programming PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf), PHP 5 Power Programming, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.

1. Developer Joy — Code must be a pleasure to write.
2. Completeness — Everything you need, right out of the box.
3. Quality & Reliability — Built on top of proven Symfony components.
4. Community — Open source, built by developers, for developers.

• ✅ Stabilize the core architecture.
• ✅ Write comprehensive documentation and API specs.
• ✅ Grow and nurture the initial community.
• ✅ Iterate based on developer feedback.

• 📚 Establish Tonka as a leading PHP framework.
• 🏗️ Build a rich ecosystem of packages and tools.
• 🌍 Foster a global developer community.
• 💡 Continuously innovate around developer experience and modern PHP.

1. The best tools are built with love.
2. Developer Experience (DX) matters deeply.
3. Open source is transformative.
4. PHP is far from dead — it evolves, and Tonka is proof of that evolution.

Building Tonka is a passion project, but it requires continuous time, care, and resources. Your support helps me:

• 🧪 Maintain, benchmark, and improve the framework.
• 📚 Write top-tier documentation and tutorials.
• 🐛 Resolve issues and merge PRs quickly.
• 🚀 Roll out new features and ecosystem tools.
• 🌍 Build and moderate the community.
• 🎓 Help others learn, grow, and contribute.

• 🐙 GitHub: github.com/clicalmani
• 🐦 Twitter: @clicalmani
• 📧 Email: clicalmani@gmail.com
• 💬 Discord: @clicalmani

Thank you for taking the time to discover my story and Tonka.

Whether you are a user, contributor, sponsor, or simply curious — thank you for being part of this journey.

Together, let's build something great. 💪

⭐ If Tonka sparks your interest, consider leaving a star on the repository and joining our growing community!