Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks, known for its simplicity and ease of use. On the other hand, Docker is a platform that allows developers to easily create, deploy, and run applications using containers. When you combine Laravel with Docker, you get a powerful development environment that allows you to easily create, test, and deploy your applications.

In this blog post, we will cover the basics of using Laravel with Docker. We will provide step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Laravel development environment using Docker. We will also show you how to use Docker to deploy your Laravel application to a production server.

What is Docker?

Docker is a platform that allows developers to package their applications into containers. Containers are lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient units that contain all the dependencies and configurations needed to run an application. This means that developers can create and test their applications in a consistent and reproducible environment.

Docker provides a number of benefits for developers. It allows developers to easily create and test their applications in a consistent environment. It also allows developers to easily deploy their applications to production servers.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP framework that was designed to make web development more accessible and enjoyable. It provides a clean, expressive syntax for creating web applications. Laravel provides a number of features that make it easy to build web applications, including routing, authentication, and database integration.

Laravel is a popular framework that is used by many developers around the world. It has a large and active community of developers who contribute to its development.

Getting started with Laravel and Docker:

To get started with Laravel and Docker, you will need to have Docker installed on your computer. You can download Docker from the official website: docker.com/products/docker-desktop

Once you have Docker installed, you can create a new Laravel project using the following command:

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel myapp

This command will create a new Laravel project in a folder called myapp. The --rm flag tells Docker to remove the container when it is done, and the -v flag tells Docker to mount the current directory as a volume in the container.

Next, you can start a new Docker container to run your Laravel application using the following command:

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 -v $(pwd)/myapp:/var/www/html php:7.4-apache

This command will start a new Docker container running PHP 7.4 and Apache. The --rm flag tells Docker to remove the container when it is done, the -p flag tells Docker to map port 8000 on the host to port 8000 in the container, and the -v flag tells Docker to mount the myapp folder as a volume in the container.

You can now visit http://localhost:8000 in your web browser to see your Laravel application running.

Using Docker Compose:

Docker Compose is a tool that allows you to define and run multi-container Docker applications. It allows you to define all the services that your application needs in a single YAML file. This makes it easy to start and stop your application, as well as to deploy it to a production server.

To use Docker Compose with Laravel, you will need to create a docker-compose.yml file in the root of your project. Here is an example docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3'
services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html