How to dockerize Symfony project ?

5 min readNov 27, 2022

This quickstart guide tutorial provides a basic introduction to the Symfony framework running on docker. This is a great starting point if you are brand new to the Symfony framework or if you want to have your docker Symfony app.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you need to have some certain prerequisites in place:

Local machine running :
  - the latest version of Docker.
  - the latest version of composer.

Get Started

Let’s create a Symfony project and then see how we can dockerize it using Docker including Mysql database and phpMyAdmin.

Step 1 - Install Docker

Before creating a container for the Symfony application and shipping it off, you need to install Docker on your local machine. For learning purpose, you will install Docker Community Edition. Select your OS from the list below and follow the setup instructions:

Step 2 — Prepare project file structure

Create new folder called ‘__your_project_name__’ then let’s perpare the files needed to dockerize the symfony project :

docker-compose.yml file :

We should add the mysql-server, phpMyAdmin, and the apache server to the services list as follow to get this final version of the file :

version: "3.8"
services:
    # Mysql database container
    db:
        image: mysql
        container_name: tutorial_db_symfony
        restart: always
        volumes:
            - db-data:/var/lib/mysql
        environment:
            MYSQL_ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD: 'yes'
        networks:
            - tutorial

    # phpmyadmin container
    phpmyadmin:
        image: phpmyadmin
        container_name: tutorial_phpmyadmin
        restart: always
        depends_on:
            - db
        ports:
            - 8080:80
        environment:
            PMA_HOST: db
        networks:
            - tutorial

    # Symfony apache project container
    www:
        build: docker/php
        container_name: tutorial_symfony
        ports:
          - "8741:80"
        volumes:
            - ./docker/php/vhosts:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled
            - ./:/var/www
        restart: always
        networks:
            - tutorial

networks:
    tutorial:

volumes:
    db-data:

docker/php/Dockerfile :

We should create a Dockerfile file inside docker/php folder to create our custom php apache image as folow :

FROM php:8.1-apache

RUN echo "ServerName localhost" >> /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

RUN apt-get update \
    && apt-get install -qq -y --no-install-recommends \
    cron \
     vim \
     locales coreutils apt-utils git libicu-dev g++ libpng-dev libxml2-dev libzip-dev libonig-dev libxslt-dev;

RUN echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" > /etc/locale.gen && \
    echo "fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen && \
    locale-gen

RUN curl -sSk https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --disable-tls && \
   mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

RUN docker-php-ext-configure intl
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql mysqli gd opcache intl zip calendar dom mbstring zip gd xsl && a2enmod rewrite
RUN pecl install apcu && docker-php-ext-enable apcu
    
ADD https://github.com/mlocati/docker-php-extension-installer/releases/latest/download/install-php-extensions /usr/local/bin/

RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/install-php-extensions && sync && \
    install-php-extensions amqp

WORKDIR /var/www

docker/php/vhosts/vhosts.conf :

And a vhosts.conf file inside docker/php/vhosts folder as folow :

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/project/public
    DirectoryIndex /index.php

    <Directory /var/www/project/public>
        AllowOverride None
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from All

        FallbackResource /index.php
    </Directory>

    <Directory /var/www/project/public/bundles>
        FallbackResource disabled
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

so the final folder structure should be as follow :

Step 3 — Run && Build the containers :

Building the container is very straight forward once you have Docker and Docker Machine on your system. The following command will look for your Dockerfile and download all the necessary layers required to get your container image running. Afterwards, it will run the instructions in the Dockerfile and leave you with a container that is ready to start.

To build your all your project docker containers, you will use the docker-compose up --build command. So make sure you run this command on your terminal / cmd after locating on your main folder where the docker-compose.yml exist.

Step 4 — Create Symfony project :

To create your Symfony project you need the composer and PHP to be installed into your machine, we already have it installed in the docker container, so we need to access the container and run the composer create-project symfony/skeleton:"6.1.*" project:

composer create-project symfony/skeleton:"6.1.*" project

Congratulation your Symfony app now is accessible on localhost:8741

Step 5 — Config the Mysql connection with your Symfony project :

To create the database we will need these important packages to be installed : so first of all lets install ORM Doctrine and maker bundle :

First, install Doctrine support via the orm Symfony pack, as well as the MakerBundle, which will help generate some code:

$ cd project
$ composer require symfony/orm-pack
$ composer require --dev symfony/maker-bundle

All you have to do now is to add the database connection to your .env file to let the application connect with the Mysql container created previously.

So you will add this line as follow :

DATABASE_URL="mysql://root:@tutorial_db_symfony:3306/tutorial?serverVersion=8&charset=utf8mb4"

Your .env file should be like this :

Step 6— Now you can test your database connection :

Then we can create the database now using the following command :

$ php bin/console doctrine:database:create

Go to http://localhost:8080/ and login with (username : root / without password) and you will find your database created named ‘tutorial’.