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Aly Sivji
Aly Sivji

Posted on • Originally published at alysivji.github.io

PHP + MySQL using Docker Compose

#php #mysql #docker #tutorial

This post was originally published on Siv Scripts

Being a Software Engineer isn't just about being effective in a specific programming language, it's about being able to solve any given problem using the tools at hand.

This week at work I have to extend the functionality of a WordPress plug-in so it can fit into our microservices-based backend architecture. This means learning enough PHP to write some production-grade code.

I don't want to install PHP on my local machine so this is the perfect use case for Docker! In this Quick Hit, I will describe how to create a containerized PHP + MySQL development environment using Docker Compose.

The LAMP Stack is back!

Instructions

  • We'll start by creating a folder for this project:

    mkdir lamp-stack && cd lamp-stack

  • Create another subdirectory, /php which contains the following index.php file:

<!-- ./php/index.php -->

<html>
    <head>
        <title>Hello World</title>
    </head>

    <body>
        <?php
            echo "Hello, World!";
        ?>
    </body>
</html>
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  • Populate docker-compose.yml with the following configuration: 
# ./docker-compose.yml

version: '3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: my_secret_pw_shh
      MYSQL_DATABASE: test_db
      MYSQL_USER: devuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: devpass
    ports:
      - "9906:3306"
  web:
    image: php:7.2.2-apache
    container_name: php_web
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - ./php/:/var/www/html/
    ports:
      - "8100:80"
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
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  • Our directory structure should look as follows: 
$ tree
.
├── docker-compose.yml
└── php
    └── index.php
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Time to learn some PHP!

Notes
  • We use port-forwarding to connect to the inside of containers from our local machine.
    • webserver: http://localhost:8100
    • db: mysql://devuser:devpasslocalhost:9906/test_db
  • Our local directory, ./php, is mounted inside of the webserver container as /var/www/html/
    • The files within in our local folder will be served when we access the website inside of the container

Top comments (7)

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ripsup profile image
Richard Orelup • • Edited

Thanks for the article. While trying to run through the above I ran into this error

ERROR: In file './docker-compose.yml', service must be a mapping, not a NoneType.

which I solved by updating docker-compose.yml to this

version: '3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: my_secret_pw_shh
      MYSQL_DATABASE: test_db
      MYSQL_USER: devuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: devpass
    ports:
      - "9906:3306"
  web:
    image: php:7.2.2-apache
    container_name: php_web
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - ./php/:/var/www/html/
    ports:
      - "8100:80"
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
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The indentation matters and this finally got it working. Hope this helps anyone else trying to use this.

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alysivji profile image
Aly Sivji •

Thanks for the heads up!

Didn't realize the indentation got messed up as I copied this over. It has been corrected.

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ripsup profile image
Richard Orelup •

I'm just getting in to Docker so I'm actually glad it had that issue so I'm now aware that I have to get the indentation correct. :)

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vladimir_efremenko_af2271 profile image
Vladimir Efremenko •

When working with the database from the application, I get the following:
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysqli_connect() in /var/www/html/index.php:6 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /var/www/html/index.php on line 6

Connection code:
<?php
$servername = "localhost:9906";
$username = "devuser";
$password = "devpass";
$dbname = "test_db";
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname) or die("Fatal error: " . mysqli_connect_error());
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
printf("Fatal error: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
exit();
}
?>

With the help of mysqlworkbench i can connect and work with the database!
Tell me where I went wrong and why it doesn't work?

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valenzuelatalo profile image
Gonzalo Valenzuela •

Thanks, Aly. I have a question: if the container is restarted, are the MySQL databases lost? In other words, is there persistence in the database?

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alysivji profile image
Aly Sivji • • Edited

The setup I describe above stores data inside of the container. This data is lost when the container is deleted (docker-compose down)

You could mount a volume so the data is persisted on your local machine.

Looking at hub.docker.com/_/mysql/ (search for Where to Store Data), we can update the docker-compose.yml with another volume mount as follows:

# ./docker-compose.yml

version: '3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: my_secret_pw_shh
      MYSQL_DATABASE: test_db
      MYSQL_USER: devuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: devpass
    volumes:
      - ./sql:/var/lib/mysql
    ports:
      - "9906:3306"
  web:
    image: php:7.2.2-apache
    container_name: php_web
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - ./php/:/var/www/html/
    ports:
      - "8100:80"
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true

Now data will persist in the ./sql directory.

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valenzuelatalo profile image
Gonzalo Valenzuela •

Thank you very much!

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