PetPal

A simple PHP demo app for browsing cute pets — dogs, cats, and birds. Built as a starter project for learning GitHub Actions and deploying to GitHub Pages.

Features

• Mock login with pre-filled demo credentials
• Pet gallery with 8 mock pets (dogs, cats, birds)
• Session-based auth when running locally with PHP
• Static export for GitHub Pages (PHP runs at build time in CI)

Demo credentials

Field	Value
Email	demo@petpal.com
Password	pets123

Run locally

Requires PHP 8.1+.

cd php-home
php -S localhost:8000

Open http://localhost:8000, click Sign In, and browse the pet gallery.

Deploy to GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages serves static files only — it cannot run PHP on each request. This project handles that by rendering PHP templates to HTML during the GitHub Actions build.

Setup steps

1. Create a GitHub repo and push this project:

   git init
   git add .
   git commit -m "Initial PetPal PHP project"
   git branch -M main
   git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
   git push -u origin main

2. Enable GitHub Pages in your repo:

   • Go to Settings → Pages
   • Under Build and deployment, set Source to GitHub Actions

3. Push to main — the workflow in .github/workflows/deploy.yml will:

   • Run PHP to build static HTML into public/
   • Deploy the result to GitHub Pages

4. Your site will be live at https://YOUR_USERNAME.github.io/YOUR_REPO/

Build static files manually

php scripts/build-static.php

Output lands in public/ (index.html, pets.html, assets).

Project structure

├── index.php              # Login page (auto-filled credentials)
├── pets.php               # Protected pet list
├── logout.php             # End session
├── includes/
│   ├── auth.php           # Session auth helpers
│   ├── config.php         # App config & mock user
│   ├── pets-data.php      # Mock pet data
│   ├── header.php
│   └── footer.php
├── assets/css/style.css
├── assets/js/static-auth.js   # Client auth for static build
├── scripts/build-static.php   # Static site generator
└── .github/workflows/deploy.yml

How it works

Environment	Auth	Pets page
Local PHP	PHP sessions	pets.php
GitHub Pages	JS + pre-rendered HTML	pets.html

Locally you get real PHP behavior. On GitHub Pages, the Action pre-renders pages so visitors still see the full site.