Neo4j PHP Friends API

This project is an example of how to create a JSON API with Neo4j and PHP

Please refer to the OpenAPI definition at: https://app.swaggerhub.com/apis-docs/Laudis/neo4j-php-friends-api/dev-main.

The live stream using the API can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwz5XVtbfSY

Requirements

• PHP 8.2.35+, 8.3.36+, 8.4.27+ or 8.5.12+ with the curl, json and mbstring extensions. Earlier patch releases are vulnerable to CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, and composer install refuses to run on them.
• Composer 2
• A Neo4j database (tested with Neo4j 4.4 and 5)

Running the server

1. Run in cli: composer install
2. Create a .env based on the .env.example file. NEO4J_URI accepts the bolt, bolt+s, bolt+ssc, neo4j, neo4j+s and neo4j+ssc schemes, e.g. bolt://neo4j:test@localhost. Use bolt:// for a single server and neo4j:// for a cluster or Aura. Without a .env file the app connects to bolt://neo4j:test@localhost.
3. Run in cli: composer start. The API is served on http://localhost:8080.

Alternatively, run composer install and then docker compose up to serve the API on http://localhost:8080 with PHP 8.4. Inside the container localhost is the container itself, so NEO4J_URI must point to a host the container can reach.

Running the tests

The tests need a running Neo4j database. They use the NEO4J_URI from the .env file, or bolt://neo4j:test@localhost without one.

composer install
vendor/bin/phpunit
vendor/bin/phpstan
vendor/bin/phpcs

Basic CLI examples

The scripts/ folder also includes examples on how the driver and and client works. Run them with e.g. php scripts/1_drivers_uris.php; they read NEO4J_URI from the .env file.