Set up a complete Laravel development environment with Docker Compose including PHP-FPM, Nginx, MySQL, and Redis. Reproducible local stacks for every team member.

Introduction

Inconsistent development environments waste hours of debugging time. Docker Compose solves this by defining your entire Laravel stack in a single YAML file that every team member can spin up identically. No more "works on my machine" issues, no conflicting PHP versions, and no manual MySQL installations.

This guide builds a production-like local environment with PHP-FPM, Nginx, MySQL 8, and Redis - all orchestrated through Docker Compose.

Project Structure

project-root/
├── docker/
│   ├── nginx/
│   │   └── default.conf
│   └── php/
│       └── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .env
└── ... (Laravel files)

The Docker Compose File

version: "3.8"

services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: docker/php/Dockerfile
    container_name: laravel-app
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
    networks:
      - laravel
    depends_on:
      - mysql
      - redis

  nginx:
    image: nginx:1.25-alpine
    container_name: laravel-nginx
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
      - ./docker/nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    networks:
      - laravel
    depends_on:
      - app

  mysql:
    image: mysql:8.0
    container_name: laravel-mysql
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_USER: laravel
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: secret
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    volumes:
      - mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - laravel

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    container_name: laravel-redis
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"
    networks:
      - laravel

networks:
  laravel:

volumes:
  mysql-data:

PHP Dockerfile

Create docker/php/Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.3-fpm

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    git unzip libpng-dev libonig-dev libxml2-dev libzip-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring zip exif pcntl bcmath gd \
    && pecl install redis && docker-php-ext-enable redis

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

WORKDIR /var/www/html

Nginx Configuration

Create docker/nginx/default.conf:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;
    root /var/www/html/public;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass app:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Running the Stack

# Build and start all services
docker compose up -d --build

# Install dependencies
docker compose exec app composer install

# Run migrations
docker compose exec app php artisan migrate

# Verify
curl http://localhost:8080

This approach pairs well with CI/CD pipelines. For teams managing multiple services, check out our guide on WordPress Multisite on Kubernetes. Explore our DevOps as a Service offering to streamline your entire workflow.

Docker Compose gives Laravel teams a consistent, portable development environment that mirrors production. Adding services like Mailhog, MinIO, or Elasticsearch is a matter of appending a few lines to the YAML file. Commit the Docker configuration alongside your application code and every contributor starts from the same baseline.

Read how we handle it in DevOps as a Service.

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