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).
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For PHP projects run through the command line interface (CLI), you can do the following.
Dockerfile in your PHP projectFROM 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
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
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.
Dockerfile in your PHP projectFROM php:5.6-apache
COPY src/ /var/www/html/
Where src/ is the directory containing all your php code. Then, run the commands to build and run the Docker image:
$ docker build -t my-php-app .
$ docker run -d --name my-running-app my-php-app
We recommend that you add a custom php.ini configuration. COPY it into /usr/local/etc/php by adding one more line to the Dockerfile above and running the same commands to build and run:
FROM php:5.6-apache
COPY config/php.ini /usr/local/etc/php/
COPY src/ /var/www/html/
Where src/ is the directory containing all your php code and config/ contains your php.ini file.
We provide the helper scripts docker-php-ext-configure, docker-php-ext-install, and docker-php-ext-enable to more easily install PHP extensions.
For example, if you want to have a PHP-FPM image with iconv, mcrypt and gd extensions, you can inherit the base image that you like, and write your own Dockerfile like this:
FROM php:5-fpm
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
        libfreetype6-dev \
        libjpeg62-turbo-dev \
        libmcrypt-dev \
        libpng12-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) iconv mcrypt \
    && docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/ --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/include/ \
    && docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) gd
Remember, you must install dependencies for your extensions manually. If an extension needs custom configure arguments, you can use the docker-php-ext-configure script like this example.
Some extensions are not provided with the PHP source, but are instead available through PECL. To install a PECL extension, use pecl install to download and compile it, then use docker-php-ext-enable to enable it:
FROM php:5-fpm
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y libmemcached-dev \
	&& pecl install memcached \
	&& docker-php-ext-enable memcached
Some extensions are not provided via either Core or PECL; these can be installed too, although the process is less automated:
FROM php:5-apache
RUN curl -fsSL 'https://xcache.lighttpd.net/pub/Releases/3.2.0/xcache-3.2.0.tar.gz' -o xcache.tar.gz \
    && mkdir -p xcache \
    && tar -xf xcache.tar.gz -C xcache --strip-components=1 \
    && rm xcache.tar.gz \
    && ( \
        cd xcache \
        && phpize \
        && ./configure --enable-xcache \
        && make -j$(nproc) \
        && make install \
    ) \
    && rm -r xcache \
    && docker-php-ext-enable xcache
DockerfileIf you don't want to include a Dockerfile in your project, it is sufficient to do the following:
$ docker run -d -p 80:80 --name my-apache-php-app -v "$PWD":/var/www/html php:5.6-apache