Preface:
I had posted a stack overflow question and there seemed to be little documentation or explanation about how this separation of power works. I've decided to document this for future reference.
This is a very small proof of concept for running a docker environment.
This test environment contains the following separate containers working together:
- php:7.1-fpm-alpine
- httpd:2.4-alpine
- mysql:5.6
There is also an nginx section commented out in the docker-compose file that can be interchanged with apache.
For more info please see docker-compose.yml
Setup a hostfile that points 127.0.0.1 to docker.dev
docker-compose up -d
Visit docker.dev in your browser.
Please wait up to 60 seconds for the MySQL service to be available to connect to!
First and foremost, the biggest problem was getting apache to run PHP files rather than display their source code. Because Apache and PHP are running in separate containers we couldn't simply have apache call PHP to render the files.
The answer to this was to to use PHP FPM which will accept incoming requests. We proxy our Apache requests to PHP FPM. You can find this direct setting here.
I found out this was possible in nginx first - docs here
And then I applied what I found in nginx to Apache through some help here.
After being able to run PHP files through apache the next error I ran into was that I was missing the MySQL extension for PHP. Because we're using lightweight alpine linux distros, we can't simply add php extensions through yum or apt or event apk (alpines package manager). After a while of googling my fingers off I found out that docker has a solution for this. You can see it in action here, and that link also includes commentary to where I stumbled across the solution.
Finally, now that I can run MySQL functions in PHP. Of course I run into my last problem - the good ol' connection refused error. I knew that my credentials were valid because through port forwarding I could connect with a MySQL GUI. I googled my fingers off for a few minutes and came across a networking concept within Docker that I wasn't aware of of. This stackoverflow answer states that along with networking your PHP & MySQL services, you want to declare your MySQL host as the name of your MySQL service. You can see related aspects in index.php and docker-compose.yml
If you have any Questions feel I skipped over an import detail, I'd be glad to elaborate.
Containerizing Apache, MySQL and PHP With Docker Asked 5 years, 2 months ago Modified 4 years, 11 months ago Viewed 9k times
I've been searching the web and reading manuals and I just can't seem to get my head around what is wrong with my Docker setup. The Goal
To container-ize Apache, PHP and MySQL allowing them to be customized on a per-project basis. The only dependency to deploy the stack should be docker. All other dependencies / actions should be able to be able to be built / run via Dockerfile. The Proof of Concept
From my Apache + MySQL + PHP stack via docker-compose.yml file - I'd like to target an index.php page to successfully render Hello Docker! along with a list of all available databases. The Problem
When I visit docker.dev/index.php in my browser, rather than the PHP code running, I can only view the PHP source code. This is what I see:
query($sql); ?>-
fetch_assoc()) : ?>
My understanding (which may be mistaken) is that Apache is correctly handling the virtual host, but doesn't know to load the PHP file through an Apache PHP Module.
I have setup Apache to depends_on PHP and I have linked them through a network (along with MySQL) but obviously I'm missing something or else everything would be working just as I want it to).
I have created an repo on github that should allow you to test my setup with a few simple commands:
git clone https://github.com/dambrogia/docker-testing.git cd docker-testing docker-compose up -d
You will also have to edit add docker.dev to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file on your host machine!
How can I render the PHP rather than read the source of it when I visit docker.dev/index.php?
I do not want to use a PHP and Apache combined image if at all possible. I would like to have three separate containers - PHP, Apache, MySQL.