PHP Dockerfile

Dockerfile

# Use official PHP image with necessary extensions
FROM php:8.2-fpm

# Set working directory
WORKDIR /var/www

# Install dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    libpng-dev \
    libjpeg-dev \
    libfreetype6-dev \
    libonig-dev \
    libzip-dev \
    unzip \
    git \
    curl \
    && docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype --with-jpeg \
    && docker-php-ext-install gd mbstring zip pdo pdo_mysql exif

# Install Composer
COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

# Copy application files
COPY . .

# Ensure .env exists
RUN cp .env.example .env || true

# Install dependencies
RUN composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

# Set correct permissions
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www && \
    find /var/www/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; && \
    find /var/www/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; && \
    chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache database

# Switch to www-data user
USER www-data
    
# Generate application key
RUN php artisan key:generate

# Expose port 9000 for PHP-FPM
EXPOSE 9000

# Start PHP-FPM
CMD ["php-fpm"]


# Below is Optional if you want to add startup script
# COPY start.sh /start.sh
# RUN chmod 755 /start.sh
# ENTRYPOINT [ "./start.sh" ]

How to

Identify Laravel Requirements

1. PHP version and library

Check composer.json → require.php or run command below

php -v
composer show --platform

PHP Extension (docker-php-ext-install)	System Library (apt-get install)
pdo_pgsql	libpq-dev
zip	libzip-dev
gd	libpng-dev, libjpeg-dev, libfreetype6-dev
xml	libxml2-dev
intl	libicu-dev

2. PHP extensions

script to know what extensions needed:

#!/bin/bash

# Make sure composer.lock file exist
if [ ! -f "composer.lock" ]; then
    echo "Error: composer.lock not found!"
    exit 1
fi

echo ""

# Extract required PHP extensions from composer.lock
EXTENSIONS=$(jq -r '.packages[].require | keys[] | select(startswith("ext-"))' composer.lock | sort -u | sed 's/"//g')

echo "Required Extensions :"

for EXT in $EXTENSIONS; do
  echo "$EXT"
done

echo ""

Pros

You don’t need to install all extensions manually, as the PHP Docker image usually includes some by default. You can check it with docker run -it --rm [PHP_IMAGE] php -m

3. Trial and error

Run composer install and note missing extensions, Or Just copy your composer.json & .lock, then ask GPT

Select Base Image

• php:8.2-fpm → For Laravel with Nginx
• php:8.2-apache → For Laravel with Apache
• php:8.2-cli → For CLI usage

Install Composer Dependencies

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer
RUN composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Set Up Laravel Permissions

Laravel needs the storage/ and bootstrap/cache/ folders to be writable:

RUN chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www \
    && chmod -R 775 /var/www/storage \
    && chmod -R 775 /var/www/bootstrap/cache

Set Environment Variables & Optimize

1. Use .env file (via docker-compose).
2. Optimize Laravel for production:

RUN php artisan config:cache && php artisan route:cache

Startup Command

CMD ["php-fpm"]
# or
CMD ["apache2-foreground"]