How to Dockerize Laravel and MySQL

Containerizing your Laravel app ensures that your application runs in a consistent environment, regardless of where it's deployed. This eliminates the “it works on my machine” problem. With Docker, you can package Laravel, MySQL, and other dependencies into isolated containers, making local development and deployment smoother.

First, ensure that Docker is installed on your machine. You can download it from Docker's official website

Once you installed, open your terminal and type the command "docker -v". you should see something like:

docker -v
Docker version 27.4.0, build bde2b89

In the root of your Laravel project, create a Dockerfile:

# Use the official PHP image with required extensions
FROM php:8.1-fpm

# Set working directory
WORKDIR /var/www

# Install dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    libpng-dev \
    libjpeg-dev \
    zip \
    unzip \
    git \
    curl \
    && docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql gd

# Install Composer
COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

# Copy application files
COPY . .

# Set correct permissions
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

# Expose port
EXPOSE 9000

CMD ["php-fpm"]

Next, create a docker-compose.yml file in your project root to define your Laravel and MySQL services:

version: '3.8'

services:
  app:
    build: .
    container_name: laravel_app
    restart: unless-stopped
    working_dir: /var/www
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www
    depends_on:
      - db
    networks:
      - laravel

  db:
    image: mysql:8
    container_name: laravel_db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_USER: laravel
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: secret
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    networks:
      - laravel

networks:
  laravel:
    driver: bridge

This sets up two services: app, which runs the Laravel PHP container, and db, which runs MySQL with preconfigured credentials.

Update your Laravel .env file to use the database container:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=db
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=laravel
DB_PASSWORD=secret

Run the following command to start your Laravel and MySQL containers:

docker-compose up -d

To check running containers:

docker ps

If everything is set up correctly, your Laravel app should now be running inside Docker! 🚀

Once your containers are running, enter the Laravel container to run migrations:

docker exec -it laravel_app php artisan migrate

To serve Laravel, you can use:

docker exec -it laravel_app php artisan serve --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8000

Now, your Laravel app should be accessible at http://localhost:8000.

You've successfully dockerized your Laravel application with MySQL! This setup helps keep your development environment consistent and makes it easy to deploy your application anywhere Docker is supported.

If you need to stop the containers, run:

docker-compose down

That's it! 🎉 Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. 🚀