Connecting a Symfony app to the DB using Docker — Mac Users with OrbStack

Creating a little (beginner-friendly) cheat sheet that I can reference quickly when doing quick refreshers. Meanwhile, I will share it with you so you can have an easy time too. Happy Hacking!

• you need to run “composer require symfony/orm-pack
$ composer require --dev symfony/maker-bundle” first if your project is a “skeleton” or a microservice or an API. (Tip: iterm allows you to paste and run both commands.)
• The next step is to make sure that OrbStack is running.
• Set up your docker-compose file. It needs to have an image (from docker hub).
  - Add environment configurations (username, password, DB name)
  - define volumes. This helps you make sure that your data is not lost when you shut down the container. Docker is ephemeral!
  -(I am using Maria DB for no good reason :), well it gives you a bit more flexibility and features compared to MySQL. You can find the ultimate comparison on this URL.)
  Finally, Here is a screenshot of my docker-compose file.

• run “docker-compose up” — this will pull the image from the hub. You can run “docker-compose up -d” if you want it to run in the background.
• setup config/packages/doctrine.yml to specify your server version
• Setup your.env file to reflect DB passwords, name, and other configurations as outlined in Symfony documentation.