Docker Environment for use with Craft or Laravel Projects

** This documentation is work in progress and may not be complete. I will be adding more documentation on how things work next week.

Introduction

This repository contains both a docker file which will build a docker image based on Ubuntu 16.04 with Nginx, Php 7.1 and Redis aswell as a docker compose environment which will build a more complex multi frontend behind a load balancer setup.

This project has some very specific needs for our company with the requirement of the php MS SQL drivers as well as ssh keys for access to our private bit bucket accounts. Both of these steps can be removed from the Dockerfile is you are using this as a basis for Dockerising your own development / production environments.

My hope is to provide a simple example of how to set up docker for development with both a simple script to run which will build up a Docker container to allow for local development as well as using docker-compose to build up a multi server application sitting behind a load balancer and using redis as a caching environment for session handling

Docker is cross platform but any examples given are based on Docker for Windows and using git bash as the CLI.

Docker File

The Docker image created by the docker file does things a bit differently as it runs several services within the same image. This was purposely done to keep it simple as we have to deal with staff with different skill sets and we want to keep things simple as developers only have to learn a few commands.

Docker only allows for a single process to be run from within a container so we use 'supervisor' to launch Nginx, Php and Redis

The default web root is /public which suits Craft 2 and Laravel Projects.
If you are wanting Craft 3 support you will have to change the nginx.default.conf file so the nginx root uses /web instead.

The docker file will basically create a Ubuntu web server running php7.1 with a self signed SSL.

We generally use a dedicated SQL server which the developers use as a shared resource. The docker file does not create any SQL services other than adding the mysql command line tools to the image.

You will need to have a basic understand how docker works with management of images and containers but the shell script included should do all the heavy work for you.

redis is installed by default. It's upto you if you want to use it. It can be accessed on localhost if requried.

Installation

You will need to install

gitbash (https://git-scm.com/downloads)

This provides a nice CLI for git as well as allowing for linux type shell scripts to run under windows. If you are natively running under Mac os or Linux then you can ignore this step.

and

Docker for Windows (https://hub.docker.com)

You are best to sign up and create an account. There is no cost with this nor do you have to provide anything more than your name and email address..

If you are using Mac Os or Linux then you will need to install the version for your OS.

You can install composer if you wish but it is installed in the docker image and it's just as easy to ssh into the machine the run if from there. (composer under windows can be a bit of a pain to setup)

To get the docker environment up and running you will have to copy all the files in this repo into the main folder of your Craft/Laravel (or any other php based project) (you can exclude the README.md :)

    .docker/
    Dockerfile
    docker-compose.yml

If your project requires any access to any private repos (ie. company) you will need to copy your .ssh folder over to the project. (make sure to add .ssh to your .gitignore file). If you don't require this than remove the SSH key section from the Dockerfile

At that point you will only have to run the run.sh command from git bash (once you have cd'd into your project folder).

This will build the docker image (the first time you do this It can take approximately 15-20 minutes as it has to do a full install of a linux server. Once the image has been created it will only take a few seconds to start on subsequent runs)

The docker instance will mount the current folder (on your local environment) into /web within the Docker container.

Running the Docker image in this mode will output all the HTTP traffic logs and any php errors to the console.

At this point you can use your local web browser and go the either for the following urls

http://localhost:81 or https://localhost

If going the HTTPS route (which you should) you will need to accept the browser warning of the self signed SSL certificate.

The running container is called slave. You can SSH into it using.

winpty docker exec -it slave bash

You will have to do this in a new gitbash window as the window used the run the container will be outputting the logs.

If you are using Mac Os or Linux you won't need to use the initial winpty (as this is only require under a Windows environment)

Pressing Control ^C will exit the running Docker container and stop it (this may take a second or so).

Docker Compose

The shell run.sh command will spool up a single container running your application. If you require something a little more advanced then docker compose can be used to spool up a Nginx load balancer, 2 front end web servers and a redis server to handle session management.

We are not going to tell you how to configure your site to use redis as this is easily documented in whatever cms/framework you are using.

You can use docker-compose up to spool up this environment.

The environment variable REDIS_URL (passed into your container) can be used to configure your site to use the redis server.