Setup laravel project container

install composer

https://getcomposer.org/download/

Setup laravel project

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel laravel-app
cd laravel-app

Dockerize the Laravel App with Nginx

In your Laravel project root, create a Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.3-fpm

# Install system dependencies
RUN apt update && apt install -y libpng-dev libonig-dev libxml2-dev zip curl unzip git nginx net-tools netcat-traditional && apt clean

# setup node
RUN curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_23.x -o nodesource_setup.sh && chmod +x nodesource_setup.sh && bash nodesource_setup.sh && apt install -y nodejs && apt clean

# Install PHP extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd

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

WORKDIR /var/www

COPY . /var/www

# Copy the nginx config
COPY default.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
COPY start.sh /start.sh

# Give execute permissions to the start script
RUN chmod +x /start.sh

# set permissions for project
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

# update composer and install npm
RUN composer update && npm install && npm run build


CMD ["/start.sh"]

In the above Dockerfile, you would also need an Nginx configuration (default.conf). Here's a basic example:

server {
    listen 80;

    index index.php index.html;
    root /var/www/public;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log debug;

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

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

add this config to the main laravel dir with the docker file

you will also need to add a script to start the php-fpm process, you can find it with whereis php-fpm

cat <<EOF | sudo tee start.sh
#!/bin/sh

export DB_HOST="mysql"

# Wait for MySQL to be ready
echo "Waiting for MySQL to be available..."

until nc -z "$DB_HOST" 3306; do
  echo "MySQL is unavailable - waiting..."
  sleep 3
done

echo "MySQL is available - continuing with migrations..."

# Run Laravel commands
php artisan key:generate
php artisan migrate --force  # Use --force in production to run migrations non-interactively

# Start PHP-FPM in the background
php-fpm -D

# Start nginx in the foreground
nginx -g "daemon off;"
EOF

be sure to make it executable

chmod +x start.sh

This will run php-fpm in the background, followed by nginx in the foreground when the container starts, ensuring that both services are available and running.

Edit env file

set this in env file, the env file will be ignored by gitignore file created by default, either manually inject or remove ignore. The hostname (DB_HOST) is the name of the MySQL service you'll create in Kubernetes or the name of the docker container in docker compose.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=mysql           # Use DNS name or IP, name of container for compose, name of K8s Service in K8s
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel-app
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=password

build and push the image to container registry

This Part is automated by our pipeline

build

docker build -t edgeforge-labs/laravel-app .

tag

docker tag local-image:tagname new-repo:tagname

push

docker push edgeforge-labs/laravel-app

my examples:

docker build -t edgeforge-labs/laravel-app .
docker tag edgeforge-labs/laravel-app:latest edgeforge-labs/laravel-app:latest
docker push edgeforge-labs/laravel-app:latest

run php aritsan migrate

for this the db needs to be connected, we added a step for this in the startup script.

Deploy created image via docker compose

Docker compose is the default way to use this container. The compose file can be found in the app root. Just run it and verify functionality at http://localhost:8080

Deploy created image via kubernetes

under manifests/ there is a ful deploy.yml, this has all the manifests needed to make the app, PV still needs to be added but all the rest is there.