Docker with PHP 8.1, NGINX and MySQL

In this blogpost you are learning how to create an PHP 8.1, nginx and MySQL development environment with docker.

Requirements

• Docker
• Docker compose

Install docker

To install docker follow the documentation via the following link https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

Install docker compose

To install docker compose follow the documentation via the following link https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

Create a directory

Make a new folder somewhere on your pc.

Add docker-compose file

Add a file called docker-compose.yml

Open docker-compose file

Open the docker-compose.yml inside an editor. Add the following
note that you can change the name of the containers to whatever you like.

version: '3.8'

services:
    php:
        container_name: 'blog_docker_php'
        build:
            context: './php'
            dockerfile: 'Dockerfile'
        working_dir: '/var/www'
        volumes:
            - './www:/var/www'

    nginx:
        container_name: 'blog_docker_nginx'
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
            - '8080:80'
            - '443:443'
        volumes:
            - './www:/var/www'
            - './nginx/conf.d/:/etc/nginx/conf.d/'
            - './nginx/logs/:/var/log/nginx/'

    database:
        container_name: 'blog_docker_db'
        image: mysql:5.7
        ports:
            - '3307:3306'
        environment:
            MYSQL_DATABASE: databasename
            MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
            MYSQL_USER: user
            MYSQL_PASSWORD: root
            SERVICE_TAGS: dev
            SERVICE_NAME: mysql
        volumes:
            - './data/db:/var/lib/mysql'

Adding directories

Now add the following directories to our project folder like the picture below.

Add Dockerfile to PHP directory

Create a new file called Dockerfile
Add the follwing:

FROM php:8.1-fpm

# Install Dependencies
RUN apt-get update \
    && apt-get upgrade -y \
    && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
        ca-certificates \
        curl \
        sqlite3 \
        memcached \
        libzip-dev \
        libpng-dev \
        libmcrypt-dev \
        zip \
        libcurl4-openssl-dev \
        libedit-dev \
        libssl-dev \
        libonig-dev \
        libpq-dev \
        libxml2-dev \
        xz-utils \
        libsqlite3-dev \
        git \
        vim \
        nano \
        net-tools \
        pkg-config \
        iputils-ping

# Install PHP Extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install gd \
    bcmath \
    calendar \
    iconv \
    ctype \
    intl \
    xml \
    pcntl \
    mysqli \
    opcache \
    pdo \
    pdo_mysql \
    pgsql \
    zip

# Install Composer
RUN curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
RUN ln -s $(composer config --global home) /root/composer
RUN rm -rf /tmp/*

Add Nginx config file

Go to the nginx/conf.d directory and add a file called site.conf
Add the following:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;

    index index.php index.html;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    root /var/www/;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass blog_docker_php:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    }
}

To change the root of your project you can change the root property

server {
    ...
    root /var/www/;

    ...
}

If you have changed the container name inside the docker-compose.yml
you need to change the name called blog_docker_php to your container name inside the site.conf

server {
    location ~ \.php$ {
        ...
        fastcgi_pass blog_docker_php:9000;
        ...
    }
}

Add your PHP project

Now you can add your php project to the www directory in my case i will add an file called index.php with the following

<?php
    phpinfo();

If add your own project don’t forget to change the root inside the nginx/conf.d/site.conf

Build docker containers

Now we can build the docker containers based on the docker-compose.yml
First we open the terminal and go to the root of the project folder.
Execute the following command

docker-compose build

After some time it is successfully build now we can start our container by the following command

docker-compose up -d

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080/

To shutdown the containers you simply run

docker-compose down