How to install Laravel in Docker

"Learn how to install Laravel in Docker with a step-by-step example of creating a container, setting up PHP and MySQL."

Installing Laravel in Docker can be a great way to quickly get up and running with a Laravel development environment. Docker is a powerful containerization platform that allows you to easily package your applications and deploy them in a consistent environment. With Docker, you can easily spin up a new container to test out a new feature or to develop an application without having to worry about configuring a complex system.

Step 1: Install Docker and Docker Compose

The first step to setting up a Docker container with Laravel is to install Docker and Docker Compose. Docker is a containerization platform that allows you to easily create and run containers. Docker Compose is a tool that allows you to define and run multi-container Docker applications. To install Docker and Docker Compose, follow the instructions in the official Docker documentation.

# Install Docker
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker

# Install Docker Compose
sudo apt-get install docker-compose

Step 2: Create a Docker Compose File

The next step is to create a Docker Compose file that will define the services that will be used in our Laravel environment. The following example docker-compose.yml file will create a web service that uses the official PHP Docker image, and sets up the environment to run Laravel. The web service will also be linked with a MySQL database service.

version: '3'

services:
  web:
    image: php:7.2-apache
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: mysql:5.6
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_USER: laravel
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: laravel
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"

Step 3: Create the Laravel Project

Once the Docker Compose file is created, we can use it to create the Laravel project. We can use the web service defined in the Docker Compose file to run the Laravel installer. To do this, we need to run the following command in the same directory as the Docker Compose file:

docker-compose run web composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel .

This command will create a new Laravel project in the current directory. Once the project is created, we can open the project in our favorite editor and start developing. If we need to run any other commands, like artisan, we can use the same docker-compose run command, but replace "web" with the service name that we want to use.

Step 4: Run the Application

Once the Laravel project is created, we can start the application by running the following command:

docker-compose up -d

This command will start the web and database services defined in the Docker Compose file. Once the containers are running, we can access the Laravel application by visiting http://localhost in our browser.

Installing Laravel in Docker is a great way to quickly get up and running with a Laravel development environment. By using Docker, we can easily spin up new containers to test out new features or develop applications without having to configure a complex system. With a few simple commands, we can quickly create and run a Docker container with Laravel.