Learning the concepts of Docker, I created an example Laravel application using Docker's best architectural and security practices. The boilerplate code in this repository provides:

• Good practices on security (not running as root, no passwordless databases, no unnecessary file permissions).
• Using official Apache, PHP 8, MySQL 8 and Redis 6 images.
• A single code base for development and production environments.
• A single .env configuration file.
• A slim Dockerfile using only official images.
• Tests structured for your CI/CD pipeline.
• A convenient binary providing up, artisan, exec, push, and even deploy commands.
• Deployments to Kubernetes using the commit hash for easy rollbacks or staging.
• Built-in support for Laravel's key concepts: scheduling, queues, cache etc.
• Built-in Laravel Horizon for managing queue workers through configuration.
• All configuration in source control (e.g. virtual hosts, OPcache, InnoDB parameters).
• Integrated with GitHub Actions for automated testing and publishing of images.

Installation

Docker Engine version 18.06.0 or higher is required.

• Install Docker Desktop for Mac (or the equivalent for your operating system)
• Clone this repository
• Copy .env.example to .env and edit the file to match your environment.
• Run ./dock up
• Run ./dock exec composer install
• Run ./dock artisan migrate
• Visit http://localhost

The application will show a status page that can be used to help you understand how the cache, scheduler and queue work together. When the scheduler is running, it will dispatch a job every minute that is being processed immediately when the queue (Horizon) is running. Example output:

Database Driver mysql
Database Server db:3306
Cache Driver    redis
Queue Driver    redis
Cache Test      11:21:50 (TTL: 1 minute)
Scheduler Test  2 jobs dispatched
Queue Test      2 jobs handled

Usage

The stack can be managed through the dock <command> command-line executable. It supports the following commands.

Command	Description
up	Start the local stack (webserver, database) for development.
down	Stop the local stack.
restart	Restart the local stack.
scheduler	Start Laravel's scheduler daemon.
queue	Start Laravel Horizon (queue workers).
tail	Tail and follow the Laravel logs.
build <tag>	Build and tag an image ready for production.
push <tag>	Push the latest image to the container registry defined in REGISTRY.
deploy <tag>	Deploy to Kubernetes
exec [...]	Run arbitrary commands inside the running application container. For example: dock exec bash to open an interactive shell in the running app container.
kubectl [...]	Run kubectl with the context defined in KUBERNETES_CONTEXT.
test [...]	Run phpunit inside the running application container. For example: dock test --filter ExampleTest.
artisan [...]	Run artisan inside the running application container. For example: dock artisan tinker.
<any>	Will be passed to docker-compose. For example: dock ps.

By default, Apache binds to port 80, MySQL to port 3306 and Redis to port 6379. This can be changed by modifying HOST_PORT_HTTP, HOST_PORT_HTTPS, HOST_PORT_DB or HOST_PORT_REDIS.

Kubernetes

You can deploy the Laravel application, including MySQL, Redis, Horizon and a scheduler by applying the kubernetes.yaml config. The example assumes that you are using external (managed) services for MySQL and Redis, but this can be modified to run your own containers using persistent volumes.

First, create secrets for the Docker registry and application keys and passwords.

./dock kubectl create secret docker-registry regcred --docker-server=<Registry server> --docker-username=<Username> --docker-password=<Password>
./dock kubectl create secret generic app-secrets --from-literal=APP_KEY='<256 bit key>' --from-literal=DB_PASSWORD='<MySQL password>' --from-literal=REDIS_PASSWORD='<Redis password>'

Then, deploy the application.

./dock deploy <tag>

Finally, you can run the migrations or any other artisan command.

./dock kubectl exec -it service/web -- php artisan migrate

GitHub Actions

This repository includes and uses an example workflow that builds the image, starts the application, runs the tests and publishes the image to the GitHub Container Registry. Images are tagged with the SHA-hash of the commit that triggered the build. By default, the image is only published for builds in the main branch. However, the image is also published in other branches when the commit message includes the string /publish.

You can find the workflow at https://github.com/jarnovanleeuwen/laravel-dock/blob/main/.github/workflows/push.yml.