Installation

serversideup/php is compatible with any container orchestrator that supports Docker images (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Docker Compose, HashiCorp Nomad, etc.). All images are hosted on DockerHub and GitHub Packages for free. Containers default to running Debian, but Alpine images are also available.

Understanding containers and Docker

If you're new to Docker or containers, you might be wondering why you should containerize your application in the first place. The short answer: containers let you run your application anywhere — from your laptop to any cloud provider — with zero changes.

Key benefits of containerization:

• Consistency - Your app runs the same on Mac, Windows, Linux, and production
• Confidence - Infrastructure as code means easier testing and rollbacks
• Freedom - No vendor lock-in; migrate hosts with minimal effort
• Simplicity - Scaling from 1 to 100 containers is straightforward

There are some important terms to understand when working with containers:

If you'd like to learn more about containers, you can learn more following the guide below.

Already using Docker?

If you're already using the official PHP images, switching will literally take you seconds.

Quick Start

In order to run containers, we need a container engine installed such as Docker. You can follow Docker's installation guide to get started. Confirm Docker is working by running these commands in your terminal:

# Check Docker version
docker --version

# Check Docker Compose version
docker compose version

If you see version numbers after running the commands, you're ready to go!

Create a new sample project

Let's create a new sample project to test our Docker setup. Open up your terminal and run the following commands:

# Create a project directory with a public directory
mkdir -p my-php-project/public

# Change directory to our project
cd my-php-project

Once we're in our project directory, we will want to create two files:

1. public/index.php - The file that will be served when someone visits our site
2. compose.yml - The place where we will put our configuration files

The content of these files should look like:

<?php
// Let's just print out some PHP info
phpinfo();
?>

Save these files and ensure they are in the exact structure above.

Bringing up your PHP app

From your project root directory, run the following command to start your PHP app:

docker compose up

Making changes

Let's make some upgrades to our PHP app:

1. Let's upgrade to PHP 8.4
2. Let's use FrankenPHP instead of FPM-NGINX
3. Turn on OPCache
4. Increase the upload limit to 500M

To do this, we need to need to:

docker compose down

services:
  php:
    # Change image to 8.4 with FrankenPHP
    image: serversideup/php:8.4-frankenphp
    ports:
      - 80:8080
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www/html
    environment:
      # Increase the upload limit to 500M
      PHP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILE_SIZE: "500M"
      # Turn OPCache on
      PHP_OPCACHE_ENABLE: "1"

docker compose up

You've got this 💪

You've successfully created your first PHP app with Docker. Better yet, you've seen the power of serversideup/php where it's easy to change your PHP version and variation by changing a single line in your configuration file.

If you're curious what the whole process looks like from Development to Production, check out out guide below.