How I Built a Self-Updater With GitHub Releases

This article describes how a self-updating mechanism was built into PointArt, a PHP micro-framework, using only PHP's built-in functions and the GitHub Releases API.

• •The updater requires zero external dependencies, relying solely on file_get_contents(), ZipArchive, copy(), and hash_equals() available in PHP 8.1+
• •It intercepts requests before the application router runs, ensuring it works even if the framework is partially broken
• •Version tracking uses a plain text file (framework/VERSION) storing a single semver string
• •The GitHub Releases API is queried to support stable and dev channels, determined by the prerelease checkbox on each GitHub release
• •Protected paths (app/, .env, cache/, SQLite files) are never overwritten, and every touched file is backed up before replacement