Dockerized Laravel and MySQL for local development

April 8, 2017 | programming | devops | php |

Docker is awesome. Its also quite useful for local development. The following Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml will be helpful if you want to do laravel development inside of docker. I am using Ubuntu as a base, but you can probably use the official PHP image as well. Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu:16.04

RUN apt update RUN apt install -y php7.0 php7.0-zip php7.0-mbstring phpunit curl php7.0-mysql

RUN curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php RUN mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

RUN composer global require “laravel/installer”

RUN export PATH=$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH

docker-compose.yml

version: '2'
services:
  app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - .:/code
    env_file: .env
    working_dir: /code
    command: bash -c 'php artisan migrate && php artisan serve --host 0.0.0.0'
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: "mysql:5.7"
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=$your_db
      - MYSQL_USER=$your_db_user
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=$your_db_password
    volumes:
      - ./data/:/var/lib/mysql
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"

.env file Your .env file is what Laravel uses when it starts up set up various things. The only real thing to change is your DB connection info. A full sample is shown below:

APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=$your_app_key
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_LOG_LEVEL=debug
APP_URL=https://localhost
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=db
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=$your_db
DB_USERNAME=$your_db_user
DB_PASSWORD=$your_db_password
BROADCAST_DRIVER=log
CACHE_DRIVER=file
SESSION_DRIVER=file
QUEUE_DRIVER=sync
REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PORT=6379
MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
PUSHER_APP_ID=
PUSHER_KEY=
PUSHER_SECRET=

Gotchas

In order to do stuff with the database you should add the following record to your local /etc/hosts file
```
# /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 db
```
You should still install npm and run npm install from your local machine so that you can do frontend stuff.
Since we define - .:/code as a volume, this means that all of your local changes are immediately visible in the dockerized app.
If you need to access the running app or db container you can do so with docker-compose run app bash or docker-compose run db bash

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
Have smart glasses finally hit an inflection point? from The Torment Nexus
The McPhee method from the jsomers.net blog
Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Futzing Fraction from Deciphering Glyph
Sit On Your Ass Web Development from Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Issue 91 – GDP on the blockchain

The regulator set to take on primary crypto oversight is down to a single Commissioner, and new pro-crypto PACs focus on installing more Republicans in the midterms

via Citation Needed August 27, 2025

V&A East Storehouse and Operation Mincemeat in London

We were back in London for a few days and yesterday had a day of culture. First up: the brand new V&A East Storehouse museum in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park near Stratford, which opened on May 31st this year. This is a delightful new format for a mu…

via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 27, 2025

St Jude 2025

via Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed August 27, 2025

Generated by openring