First steps using Docker container for PHP development

Using docker and its container seems easy to start with but hard if it comes to actually setting up the developing you environment you really want.

To start off easy I used the official php images from docker hub.

Instead of creating a Dockerfile and building your own image based on an official php image, I found it an easy entry to use this docker command:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 --name my-apache-php-app -v "$PWD":/var/www/html php:7.2-apache

If you execute this command in the root directory of your php project assuming your index.php is located here, you should be able to open your browser on localhost:8080 and see the ouput of your index.php. Any changes in your root directory should also be reflected, due to the -v volume option.

See my example with a Dockerfile to get the same effect here.