Why Pionia?

Who this is for#

You are choosing a PHP framework for Northwind Studio’s DeskFlow — or any mobile/SPA backend — and want to know whether Moonlight’s { service, action } model beats dozens of REST controllers.

What you will learn#

• What Pionia optimizes for (versioned JSON APIs, small teams)
• How DeskFlow maps to services, switches, and Porm queries
• When to pick something else (server-rendered HTML, GraphQL-first)

Before you start#

No install required. For a hands-on comparison, scaffold DeskFlow in Introduction first.

How it works#

Pionia targets teams shipping versioned JSON APIs without Symfony-sized boilerplate. You write services and register them on switches; clients POST { "service", "action" } to http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/.

What you get#

1. Services, not controllers — business logic lives in services/TaskService.php. Moonlight dispatch replaces per-route controllers.
2. Porm, not ORM — table('tasks')->filter(...)->all() returns arrays; no model hydration overhead. See Database.
3. Real HTTP semantics — validation errors are 422, auth failures 401; the JSON body still uses returnCode. See Requests & responses.
4. Versioned switches — add v2 in settings.ini without rewriting v1. See API versioning.
5. Flexible auth — pluggable backends and per-action checks. See Security.
6. Optional Vite SPA — scaffold React/Vue beside the API. See Frontend integration.
7. Production workers — RoadRunner, OPcache preload, maintenance mode. See Operations.

When Pionia fits#

Moonlight in one paragraph#

Moonlight is the { service, action } contract: one POST target per API version, predictable JSON envelopes, and switches that map aliases to PHP classes. Pionia implements that contract with real HTTP status codes, OpenAPI export, and first-class tooling.

Common mistakes#

• Expecting Laravel-style Eloquent models — Porm queries tables directly; there is no built-in ORM layer.
• Treating Moonlight as RPC over HTTP 200 only — v3 uses real status codes for auth and validation failures.
• Choosing Pionia for a Blade-only admin site — you can, but server-rendered HTML is not the sweet spot.

What’s next#