Tin Can Forum

Tin Can is a lightweight web forum written in PHP.

The name comes from the tin can telephone.

Features

Discussion boards groupable by topic
Basic markdown support
Image attachments
Custom themes
Extensive behat test suite

Quick Start With Docker

Get started quickly with Docker, Docker Compose, and Composer.

Clone this git repository:

git clone git@github.com:ruscoe/tincan.git
cd tincan

Install requirements:

composer install

Start the Docker containers:

docker compose up

Run the installer via your web browser at:

http://localhost/install.php

If you ever want to connect to the Docker container running the web server, run:

docker exec -it tincan-web-1 /bin/bash

Deploying to a web server

You'll need a web server running PHP 8.1 or above with the following extensions:

curl
fpm
gd
mbstring
mysql
xml
zip

Run composer without development requirements:

composer install --no-dev

Set the following environment variables. Consult your web server documentation on environment variables for more information.

Variable	Description	Example
TC_BASE_PATH	The path where Tin Can files are located	/var/www/html
TC_UPLOADS_PATH	The path for user uploaded files	/var/www/html/uploads
TC_DB_HOST	The address of your database server
TC_DB_USER	The username of your database user
TC_DB_PASS	The password of your database user
TC_DB_NAME	The name of your database	tincan
TC_DB_PORT	The open port of your database server	3306

Set the permissions of the path defined in TC_UPLOADS_PATH so that files may be written. For example:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/uploads;
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/uploads;

Installation

Check the "Generate test data" checkbox if you'd like to start with sample users, boards, threads, and posts. This is useful for testing your new forum.

Click the "Install Tin Can Forum" button to install the forum and automatically log in to the admin account.

Custom Themes

See themes/README.md

Running Tests

First, connect to the Docker container by running:

docker exec -it tincan-web-1 /bin/bash

For unit tests, run:

./vendor/bin/phpunit

For feature tests (behat), run:

./vendor/bin/behat

License

MIT