Start a new Symfony5 project with docker-compose, Nginx , Php 7.4 and MariaDB

This article will contain all the steps necessary to create a symfony5 project with docker-compose, nginx and php 7.4.

File structures

To start, we’re going to need a docker folder that will contain all the necessary folders for each container. For our example, we will use nginx, php as well as mariaDB

Once this is done, we add Dockerfiles files to create our structure.

Now it is necessary to create the folder that will contain, the symfony code.

For this, in the terminal the following command imports all the desired files, in this example I create the folder “symfony”

symfony new symfony --full --no-git

By using –no-git, the symfony git will not configure and it is possible to add files to your repository without any problems.

Start Dockerfile files

The use of alpine versions allows you to have all the necessary features without the superfluous.

Database file

Change the Dockerfile file in the database folder

FROM mariadb:latest

CMD ["mysqld"]

EXPOSE 3306

FROM: Tells Docker which image to use, the format is repository:version

CMD: indicates which command it should initially launch. In this example, it starts the database server

EXPOSE: indicates which ports should be visible to Docker’s internal network. Other containers can use this information to connect to it.

In the nginx folder

The Dockerfile file in the nginx folder

FROM nginx:alpine

CMD ["nginx"]

EXPOSE 80 443

In the php-fpm folder

FROM php:fpm-alpine

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql

CMD ["php-fpm"]

EXPOSE 9000

In order to use a database, we also install the extension pdo_mysql.

Creating the docker-compose file

At the root of the docker folder, create a file called docker-compose.yml. It is in this one that we configure and connect all the containers between them.

version: '3.8'

services:
  php-fpm:

  nginx:

  database:

The Build context

In order to reach the other containers, it is necessary to define the build context with a path relative to it. Like this:

services:
  database:
    build:
      context: ./database

Setting up the database

For the database, certain attributes are mandatory, the root password as well as a database.

It is in the environment section that one can indicate der variables to Docker. In our, the name of the database, the password as well as a user for example. In our example, this looks like this:

database:
  build:
    context: ./database
  environment:
    - MYSQL_DATABASE=symfonydb
    - MYSQL_USER=user
    - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret
    - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=docker

Configuration of php-fpm

By default Docker cannot see our files or access them. To do this we use the volume section in our docker-compose.yml file

php-fpm:
  build:
    context: ./php-fpm
  volumes:
    - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony

the format is – host:container

Configuration of the nginx server

For the nginx server access to the file is also necessary

nginx:
  build:
    context: ./nginx
  volumes:
    - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony

Unfortunately this is not enough to run a server, we also need to expose ports and have configuration files.

Exposing ports

the ports section, allows to define which ports should be accessible from our machine, for nginx it is 80 and 443

nginx:
  build:
    context: ./nginx
  volumes:
    - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony
  ports:
    - "80:80"
    - "443:443"

By default, nginx only allows you to load HTML files, for symfony we need php-fpm.

Configuration files

To start we’re going to need new configuration files

As our php-fpm service is its own container, we need to tell Nginx how to find it. In the conf.d/default.conf file just add these lines

#conf.d/default.conf
upstream php-upstream {
    server php-fpm:9000;
}

Then in the sites folder, we can create the configuration file needed for symfony. This is a variant of what is find on the symfony site.

#sites/default.conf
server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    server_name localhost;
    root /var/www/symfony/public;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;
    location / {
         try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
    }
    location ~ ^/index\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass php-upstream;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;

        internal;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        return 404;
    }
}

In the file we can see fastcgi_pass php-upstream; which corresponds to our container, it is the reference to that create in conf.d/default.conf

Now we also need to change the nginx.conf configuration file

#nginx.conf
user  nginx;
worker_processes  4;
daemon off;
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}
http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    # Switch logging to console out to view via Docker
    #access_log /dev/stdout;
    #error_log /dev/stderr;
    sendfile        on;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-available/*.conf;
}

Both lines includes configures nginx with the other two files created.

Now it is necessary to add all these files to the container by modifying the nginx section in docker-composer.yml

nginx:
  build:
    context: ./nginx
  volumes:
    - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony
    - ./nginx/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    - ./nginx/sites/:/etc/nginx/sites-available
    - ./nginx/conf.d/:/etc/nginx/conf.d
  depends_on:
    - php-fpm
  ports:
    - "80:80"
    - "443:443"

Adding depends_on it is indicated that php-fpm should be started before nginx.

docker-composer.yml final

When you put all the pieces together, the file looks like this:

version: '3.8'
services:
  php-fpm:
    build:
      context: ./php-fpm
    volumes:
      - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony
  nginx:
    build:
      context: ./nginx
    volumes:
      - ../symfony:/var/www/symfony
      - ./nginx/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
      - ./nginx/sites/:/etc/nginx/sites-available
      - ./nginx/conf.d/:/etc/nginx/conf.d
    depends_on:
      - php-fpm
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
  database:
    build:
      context: ./database
    environment:
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=symfonydb
      - MYSQL_USER=user
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=docker

Then into the terminal in the docker file:

docker-compose up

Then we can call the url: http://localhost/

and voilà your symfony is ready: