Environment Setup for the Latest Version of Laravel (PHP, Nginx, Laravel, MySql) Using Docker

Project Structure

• docker - Folder for all configuration files for docker and other services
  • nginx - Folder for nginx configuration files
  • php - Folder for php configuration files
• src - Folder where the project code will be stored
• docker-compose.yml - Docker compose configuration file

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Environment Setup

• Remove empty files from src and mysql dirs.

  rm src/empty
  rm mysql/empty
  

• In docker-compose.yml, change the data to access the database

  MYSQL_DATABASE: laraveldb
  MYSQL_USER: laravel
  MYSQL_PASSWORD: secret
  MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret
  

2. Build the Project Using Docker Compose

• Run this command

  docker compose build
  

3. Create a Laravel Project

• Run this command:

docker compose run --rm composer create-project laravel/laravel .

• After running this command, the project code should appear in the src folder.

• Start docker containers

  docker compose up -d
  

• You can verify if the project is working by opening the browser. For example, if it’s set to 80:

  http://localhost
  

4. Configure Laravel project

• Configure Mysql in /src/.env . Uncomment and change:

  DB_CONNECTION=mysql       # connection name, we use mysql
  DB_HOST=mysql             # name of mysql service in docker-compose.yml
  DB_PORT=3306              # mysql standart port 
  DB_DATABASE=laraveldb     # database name from MYSQL_DATABASE in docker-compose.yml
  DB_USERNAME=laravel       # username from MYSQL_USER in docker-compose.yml
  DB_PASSWORD=secret        # user password from MYSQL_PASSWORD in docker-compose.yml
  

• Restart all services

  docker compose down
  docker compose up -d
  

5. Run Migrations

docker compose run --rm artisan migrate

Some useful commands

• Enter the php container (php is the name of the service from docker-compose.yml)

  docker compose run --rm php /bin/sh
  

• If access Forbidden

  docker compose run --rm php /bin/sh
  chown -R laravel:laravel /var/www/html