A simple guide to setup Symfony PHP framework in a local environment using Docker.

This tutorial assumes that you have already install docker and docker compose.

*For this tutorial I’ve used Ubuntu Linux.

Checking if you have installed Docker in your machine:

docker -v && docker-compose -v

In case you haven’t installed Docker and Docker Compose follow this instructions for your operating system (https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/)

1. Let’s install a Symfony project using docker

Run this command in where you want to install Symfony, you have two options here, website or microservice/console/API…

Website skeleton:

sudo docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app composer create-project symfony/website-skeleton project_name

Microservice, console application or API

sudo docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app composer create-project symfony/skeleton project_name

At the end of the installation you’ll get something like this:

2. Creating our Dockerfile

In you root folder (where you executed the create-project command) create a file called Dockerfile and paste the follow:

FROM php:8.0.3-fpm-alpine
# Set working directory
WORKDIR /var/www/html
# Install dependencies
RUN apk update \
    && apk upgrade \
    && apk add --no-cache \
        zlib-dev \
        libzip-dev \
        bash \
        unzip \
        curl
# Install extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install mysqli pdo pdo_mysql zip exif
RUN wget https://get.symfony.com/cli/installer -O - | bash \
    && mv /root/.symfony/bin/symfony /usr/local/bin/symfony
# Clean Cache
RUN rm -rf /var/cache/apk/*
CMD ["symfony", "serve", "--no-tls"]
EXPOSE 80

3. Creating our docker-compose.yml

In the same folder create a file called docker-compose.yml and paste the follow:

version: "3.3"
services:
  # we named our first service 'web'
  web:
    # build a custom image
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
#restart: on-failure
# map host port 8001 to container port 8000
    ports:
      - 8001:8000
# volumes are like shared folders
    # container will see your local code changes
    volumes:
      - ./project_name:/var/www/html
# first load the 'db' service
    depends_on:
      - db
# make 'db' a known service/host inside of 'web'
    # use this to make a mysql connection to host 'db'
    links:
      - db
networks:
      - default
db:
    # use a default image
    image: mysql:8.0
#restart: on-failure
volumes:
      - ./.mysql:/var/lib/mysql:rw
      - ./mysql-dev-init.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init.sql:ro
# again, port mapping
    # e.g. to use Sequel Pro on our mac
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
# the mysql image uses these to create database and users
    environment: 
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: db
networks:
      - default
networks:
  default:
    driver: bridge

4. Let’s build it!

Run the following command:

sudo docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up --build

If everything went well you’ll see something like this:

Let’s check the dockers running:

docker ps

You’ll see something like this:

5. Surf this beautiful dockerized Symfony

Open your browser using the next url: (http://localhost:8001/) you’ll see the welcome page:

One more thing, in case you need to access the docker use this commands:

sudo docker exec -it [container_name] bash

You’ll see something like this:

That’s all folks! Happy coding!