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.

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

You'll see the logs appear in your terminal. Keep your terminal open as we'll need it to control the container.

Viewing your PHP app

To view your PHP app, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost. You should see the PHP info page showing PHP 8.3 with the fpm-nginx variation:

You can see the PHP version is in the upper left corner of the page. But what's also cool is you can see the settings we configured in the compose.yml file are being applied.

Look for these values in the PHP info page:

• upload_max_filesize - This should show 250M
• opcache.enable - This should show Off

To make changes to these settings, we must bring the containers down first before making the changes.

Stopping your application

To stop the container, press + C on the original terminal window or you can run the following command from your project root directory:

docker compose down

Making changes to your PHP app

Let's do something a bit more interesting:

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

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"

Now let's bring the containers back up again:

docker compose up

Check http://localhost again and you should see the changes we made:

Holy smokes! We've upgraded to PHP 8.4 and you're using FrankenPHP! You can also find the changes to the PHP settings have been applied.

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.

Keep reading to understand how to choose the right image for your project.