How to Set Up Laravel in Docker

Step 1: Install Docker and Docker Compose

Install Docker Engine and the Compose plugin on your server (see our Docker install guides). Check:

docker --version
docker compose version

Step 2: Get a Laravel project

We use a small demo project (Travellist, from the DigitalOcean community). You can use your own project instead.

curl -L https://github.com/do-community/travellist-laravel-demo/archive/tutorial-1.0.1.zip -o travellist.zip

unzip travellist.zip

mv travellist-laravel-demo-tutorial-1.0.1 travellist-demo
cd travellist-demo

Step 3: Prepare the .env file

cp .env.example .env
nano .env

Set the app and database values. The database host is the name of the database service in Compose (db):

APP_NAME=Travellist
APP_ENV=dev
APP_KEY=
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost:8000

LOG_CHANNEL=stack

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=db
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=travellist
DB_USERNAME=travellist_user
DB_PASSWORD=StrongPassword

Step 4: Create the Dockerfile

nano Dockerfile

FROM php:8.2-fpm

ARG user
ARG uid

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    git curl libpng-dev libonig-dev libxml2-dev zip unzip \
    && apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

RUN useradd -G www-data,root -u $uid -d /home/$user $user \
    && mkdir -p /home/$user/.composer \
    && chown -R $user:$user /home/$user

WORKDIR /var/www
USER $user

Step 5: Nginx configuration

mkdir -p docker-compose/nginx
nano docker-compose/nginx/travellist.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    index index.php index.html;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    root /var/www/public;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass app:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    }

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
        gzip_static on;
    }
}

Step 6: MySQL initialization

Create a file that sets up the database on the first start:

mkdir -p docker-compose/mysql
nano docker-compose/mysql/init_db.sql

DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS travellist;
CREATE DATABASE travellist;
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS 'travellist_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
GRANT ALL ON travellist.* TO 'travellist_user'@'%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

(The DROP DATABASE line is only safe for a new setup, because it runs only when the data volume is empty.)

Step 7: Define the services

nano docker-compose.yml

services:
  app:
    build:
      args:
        user: sammy
        uid: 1000
      context: ./
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    image: travellist
    container_name: travellist-app
    restart: unless-stopped
    working_dir: /var/www/
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www
    networks:
      - travellist

  db:
    image: mysql:8.0
    container_name: travellist-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: travellist
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: RootPassword
      MYSQL_USER: travellist_user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: StrongPassword
    volumes:
      - dbdata:/var/lib/mysql
      - ./docker-compose/mysql/init_db.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_db.sql
    networks:
      - travellist

  nginx:
    image: nginx:alpine
    container_name: travellist-nginx
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8000:80"
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www
      - ./docker-compose/nginx:/etc/nginx/conf.d/
    networks:
      - travellist

networks:
  travellist:
    driver: bridge

volumes:
  dbdata:

Step 8: Build and run

docker compose build app
docker compose up -d

Install the PHP packages, create the app key and run the migrations:

docker compose exec app composer install
docker compose exec app php artisan key:generate
docker compose exec app php artisan migrate --seed

Step 9: Open the app

Go to http://your-server-ip:8000.

FAQ

Why use Docker for Laravel? Everyone gets the same environment, and setup on a new server takes minutes.

What is the Dockerfile for? It builds the PHP image with the extensions Laravel needs.

What does the Nginx file do? It serves the public folder and passes PHP files to PHP-FPM.

What does docker-compose.yml do? It describes the app, database and web server and starts them together.

Quick recap

• Three services: app (PHP-FPM), db (MySQL) and nginx.
• Set DB_HOST=db in .env, then docker compose up -d.