Docker-local

Repository for Docker setup files to run projects locally in containers.

Overview

This project provides a boilerplate structure and dockerfiles for essential services such as apache, php and redis for running projects locally.

To run any project in Docker, just add that project in www directory and add vhost for same in apache/httpd-vhosts.conf file.

Pre-requisites

Make sure you have Docker installed. Follow the steps mentioned on the official site if you don't already have it.

Development Setup

1. Pull the repo
2. Open terminal (Git Bash / CMD) in the project directory
3. Run docker-compose up -d --build apache (--build flag would be needed only when one of the dockerfiles in docker-compose.yml have been updated).
4. Once that is completed run docker ps. It should show you the apache, fpm & redis containers running.
5. (Optional) Run any one-off command to build/install project dependencies if required. Refer this section for more details.
6. Access the project in browser based on vhost setup in apache.
7. Once done with development, you can run docker-compose down which will stop the running containers of your project

Note that in one of the above steps you might get a notification asking for permission whether your project directory can be shared with docker environment which you should allow. Since we are sharing the code directory to the docker container as a volume to prevent rebuilding of image everytime a change happens.

Also note that all the specified docker commands are to be run from the project directory where the docker-compose.yml file is present, since it has all the configuration logic.

Running one-off tasks

1. To use composer for any purpose (installation, removal etc), instead of running the usual composer command we will run docker-compose run --rm composer. Example: docker-compose run --rm composer install to install project's dependencies.
2. To use npm for any purpose, instead of running the usual npm command we will run docker-compose run --rm npm. Example: docker-compose run --rm npm run build where build command is defined in project's package.json file.
3. To use php artisan commands use the following docker-compose run --rm artisan. Example: To put the app in maintenance mode in laravel, we will run docker-compose run --rm artisan down.

Since our project is containerized, the above commands will spawn a container for npm / composer / php artisan, execute the required command on your codebase/working-directory and then remove that container, so we do not need any of the above dependencies to be installed on our system.

Some gotchas on WSL2 (windows Subsystem for Linux)

Issue #1

There might be some file permission error in php on WSL2/linux for file writes. Follow below steps to fix.

1. Find the user id of php-fpm. Run docker exec -it fpm id -u www-data where fpm is the php-fpm container name.
2. Change the user ownership. Run sudo chown -R 82 <dir_path> where 82 is the user id of www-data obtained in step 1 & dir_path would be the path of the folder where php needs to write files.
3. Set read/write/execute permissions for group. Run sudo chmod g+rwx <dir_path> where dir_path would be the path used in step 2. This step is needed if you want to edit/delete files in dir_path, because we changed the user ownership to another user www-data in step 2.

Issue #2

Cannot use any IDE/Editor for coding unless it has support for WSL2. Try below Editors/IDEs.

• Use VSCode with Remote-WSL extension (free)
• Use PhpStorm v2020.1.2 which has support for WSL2 (paid)

Some helpful links

• Overview of Docker Compose
• Compose file specification
• Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend
• Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10
• Using WSL 2 with Visual Studio Code