# What is PHP?

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development, but which
can also be used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP can be added to
straight HTML or it can be used with a variety of templating engines and web
frameworks. PHP code is usually processed by an interpreter, which is either
implemented as a native module on the web-server or as a common gateway
interface (CGI).

> [wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP)

# How to use this image.

## With Command Line

For PHP projects run through the command line interface (CLI), you can do the
following.

### Create a `Dockerfile` in your PHP project

    FROM php:5.6-cli
    COPY . /usr/src/myapp
    WORKDIR /usr/src/myapp
    CMD [ "php", "./your-script.php" ]

Then, run the commands to build and run the Docker image:

    docker build -t my-php-app .
    docker run -it --rm --name my-running-app my-php-app

### Run a single PHP script

For many simple, single file projects, you may find it inconvenient to write a
complete `Dockerfile`. In such cases, you can run a PHP script by using the PHP
Docker image directly:

    docker run -it --rm --name my-running-script -v "$(pwd)":/usr/src/myapp -w /usr/src/myapp php:5.6-cli php your-script.php

## With Apache

More commonly, you will probably want to run PHP in conjunction with Apache
httpd. Conveniently, there's a version of the PHP container that's packaged with
the Apache web server.

### Create a `Dockerfile` in your PHP project

    FROM php:5.6-apache
    COPY . /var/www/html

Then, run the commands to build and run the Docker image:

    docker build -t my-php-app .
    docker run -it --rm --name my-running-app my-php-app

### Without a `Dockerfile`

If you don't want to include a `Dockerfile` in your project, it is sufficient to
do the following:

    docker run -it --rm --name my-apache-php-app -v "$(pwd)":/var/www/html php:5.6-apache