Using Docker for Local Development: Installation, Configuration, and Usage

Before development you often face dependency issues, environment variables, port conflicts, and mismatched production environments. Docker solves these problems by packaging applications and their dependencies into portable containers.

What is Docker

Docker is an open‑source container engine that lets developers bundle their apps and dependencies into a portable container that can run on any Linux machine, providing a lightweight, high‑performance alternative to virtual machines.

Benefits of Docker for Local Development

Rapid trial of new technologies with a single command.

Unified development and production environments across Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu.

Lower memory usage and faster start‑up compared to VMs.

Easier demonstration of features without complex setup.

Installing Docker

On macOS download the dmg file, double‑click and drag to install. Windows follows a similar process.

https://hub.docker.com/search/?type=edition&offering=community&q=

Verify installation with docker version:

Client: Docker Engine - Community
Version: 18.09.0
API version: 1.39
Go version: go1.10.4
Git commit: 4d60db4
Built: Wed Nov 7 00:47:43 2018
OS/Arch: darwin/amd64
Experimental: false

Server: Docker Engine - Community
Engine:
  Version: 18.09.0
  API version: 1.39 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version: go1.10.4
  Git commit: 4d60db4
  Built: Wed Nov 7 00:55:00 2018
  OS/Arch: linux/amd64
  Experimental: true

Installing Docker‑Compose

After installing Docker, Docker‑Compose is included. Verify with:

➜  ~ docker-compose version
docker-compose version 1.23.2, build 1110ad01
docker-py version: 3.6.0
CPython version: 3.6.6
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.0h  27 Mar 2018

Downloading Laradock

Clone the Laradock repository:

git clone https://github.com/laradock/laradock

Configuring the .env File

Copy env-example to .env: cp env-example .env Adjust APP_CODE_PATH_HOST and APP_CODE_PATH_CONTAINER if needed.

Enable Xdebug by setting PHP_FPM_INSTALL_XDEBUG and WORKSPACE_INSTALL_XDEBUG to true.

Search the .env file for any additional configuration options.

Running Containers

From the Laradock directory run: docker-compose up -d nginx mysql This builds and starts nginx, php-fpm, workspace, mysql, and related services.

Configuring the Web Project

Update the Laravel .env with database credentials:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=mysql
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=blog
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=root

Ensure the database host uses the service name (e.g., mysql) rather than 127.0.0.1 or localhost.

Configuring Host File

Add a virtual domain to /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1   blog.test

Configuring Nginx

Copy laravel.conf.example to blog.conf and edit server_name and root:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name blog.test;
    root /var/www/blog/public;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri /index.php =404;
        fastcgi_pass php-upstream;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_buffers 16 16k;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 600;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Accessing the Application

Open a browser and navigate to http://blog.test/ to see the Laravel application running inside Docker.