Docker-compose: Local PHP environment with nginx, mysql and phpMyAdmin

This tutorial is going to guide you throught the process of mounting, using docker-compose, a local php development environment with nginx, mysql and phpMyAdmin step by step.

The tutorial will have the following steps:

• Setup nginx
• Setup ngninx with PHP
• Adding mysql and phpMyAdmin

Start by creating the file docker-compose.yaml where it is going to have all docker configurations.

Setup nginx

First we need a simple webserver, for that we use a nginx image. In the docker-compose.yaml put the following code:

version: "3"
services:
    nginx:
        image: nginx
        ports:
            - "8080:80"

The ports option maps the localhost port to the inside container port, this means when you reach de 8080 port in localhost it will map the connection to port 80 inside the container.

To try this setup run docker-compose up -d, the -d flag means detach mode, if you run this command without this flag you would end up being inside the nginx container. To test the installation go to the broswser and type int th url 127.0.0.1:8080, you should see the nginx welcome webpage. To stop the container run docker-compose down

Setup nginx wih PHP

First create in the root directory the default.conf file for nginx to integrate it with PHP. For this setup this is our default.conf:

server {
	root /code;
	index index.php;

	server_name _;
    location / {
        index index.php;
    }
	location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri /index.php =404;
        fastcgi_pass php:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_buffers 16 16k;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

To copy this file inside the nginx container put the following lines under the nginx part of docker-compose.yaml:

volumes:
    - ./default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

volumes maps the files in you computer to the inside of the container.

We can see that fastcgi_pass is fowarding the requests to php:9000, the php hostname will correspond to the php container (services names are the hostname of the corresponding containers).

Until now out docker-compose.yaml should have the following content:

version: "3"
services:
    nginx:
        restart: always
        image: nginx
        ports:
            - "8080:80"
        volumes:
            - ./code:/code
            - ./default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    php:
        restart: always
        image: php:fpm
        volumes:
            - ./code:/code

This docker-compose.yaml has already two more volumes directives. You should put the PHP code inside code folder in the root directory, note that the paths containing the code inside the containers should be the same, other alternative could be ./code:/var/www/html, you could put this in the volumes directive of both containers.

Put an index.php file inside code folder with the following content:

<?php
phpinfo();

Now if you access 127.0.0.1:8080/index.php you can see the PHP info.

Adding mysql and phpMyAdmin

This is the final docker-compose-yaml:

version: "3"
services:
    nginx:
        restart: always
        image: nginx
        ports:
            - "8080:80"
        volumes:
            - ./code:/code
            - ./default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    php:
        restart: always
        image: php:fpm
        volumes:
            - ./code:/code
    mysql:
        image: mysql
        environment:
            MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
        restart: always
        volumes:
            - ./database:/var/lib/mysql
        ports:
            - "3306:3306"
    phpmyadmin:
        image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
        environment:
            PMA_HOST: mysql
            PMA_USER: root
            PMA_PASSWORD: root
        ports:
            - "8081:80"
        restart: always

In mysql it is need to create the environment variable MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD to define the mysql password for user root. To make the database persistent you can mount ./database:/var/lib/mysql, this will put all database files inside the database folder in the root directory and save the data even if you unmount the containers.

In phpMyAdmin these 3 enviroment variables PMA_HOST, PMA_USER, PMA_PASSWORD define the host to the mysql database, in this case the hostname is also mysql, the database username and the password for it.

Now you have a simple local php with mysql and phpMyAdmin development environment which can be mounted with docker-compose up -d and unmounted with docker-compose down.