Homestead replacement

This is a Docker Compose stack that runs a set of containers to act as a Docker based alternative to the Laravel/Homestead image, and also a lightweight alternative to Laravel Sail. This is primarily for Mac/Linux users on Apple Silicon Macs who cannot or do not wish to use VirtualBox or Parallels. WSL is also supported.

How to use

Setup

Cloning repo

First, clone this repo and enter the cloned repo:

git clone https://github.com/ydalton/docker-laravel.git
cd docker-laravel

Environment file

Secondly, you will need to use a .env file. Copy the .env.example as a .env as follows:

cp .env.example .env

Then you can add your changes. Change the PHP_PROJECT environment variable to the path to your project. Both relative and absolute paths are supported. For example:

PHP_PROJECT=./student_administration

or:

PHP_PROJECT=~/foo/bar/laravel-project

Relative paths MUST begin with ./ or ../, or there will be an error.

Project configuration

You will need to modify the .env file in the root of the Laravel project in order for it to work. The required changes are:

• DB_CONNECTION should be “mysql”
• DB_USERNAME should be “root”
• DB_PASSWORD should be “secret”
• DB_HOST should be “mysql”

Starting and using the containers

Before we can start the containers, we must first build the Docker containers in this repo. To do so, run ./laravel.sh build. When that is completed, run ./laravel.sh start to start the containers.

To view the Laravel project in the browser, visit http://localhost:8080. If all goes well, you should your masterpiece!

Commands

The available commands are:

• ./laravel.sh start: start the Docker containers.
• ./laravel.sh build: build the Docker containers.
• ./laravel.sh stop: stop the Docker containers.
• ./laravel.sh shell: launch a shell in the PHP container, this is to be able to run php artisan commands.

PHPMyAdmin

This container set also comes with PHPMyAdmin, to allow you to view your database in the browser. To access, visit http://localhost:8081. If it prompts you for a username and password, those are “root” and “secret” respectively.

Shutting down containers

If you are done with development for the moment, you can shut down your containers with docker compose down.

Notes

Troubleshooting

If you start with a fresh project, upon viewing your project in the browser, you might encounter this error with “connection refused”. To fix this, run this: php artisan migrate:fresh.

A note for WSL users

Move your project from your local drive to WSL’s Linux filesystem! Otherwise, you will incur a severe performance penalty! Pages will go from loading instantly to taking more than 5 seconds to load!