How to create a PHP Laravel application with our quickstart repository#

The PHP Laravel quickstart repository is a template that gives you the fastest possible way of launching a new Laravel application on Divio.

It’s based on Laravel’s own example application. The only additions are some glue code to handle configuration using environment variables, plus some additional files to take care of the Docker set-up.

Clone the repository#

Run:

git clone git@github.com:divio/php-laravel-divio-quickstart.git

You’ll find a directory named divio containing some helper modules scripts and modules, that are used (for example) to read the environment variables we provide to configure database and media storage.

Run the application locally#

This section assumes that you have Docker and the Divio CLI installed. You also need an account on Divio, and your account needs your SSH public key. See How to set up the Divio local development environment if required.

Build the Docker image#

Run:

docker-compose build

Run database migrations#

First, open a bash shell in a local container:

docker-compose run web bash

Then, in the shell run migrations using Artisan:

php artisan migrate

MySQL errors

An error can occur if the the MySQL service has failed to start up in time:

 Illuminate\Database\QueryException

SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused [...]

In this case, wait a few moments and run the command again.

Then exit the shell.

Launch the local server#

docker-compose up

This starts up the container with the default command in the docker-compose.yml file, which is:

bash -c "chmod a+x /app/divio/run-locally.sh && php /app/divio/run-env.php /app/divio/run-locally.sh"

Try accessing the site at http://127.0.0.1:8000/.

If you comment out that line in docker-compose.yml, it will start up with the command specified in the Dockerfile instead.

You now have a working, running application ready for further development. All the commands you might normally execute in development need to be run inside the Docker container - prefix them with docker-compose run web.

Mapping /app to the local host filesystem#

The host/container volume mapping directive in the docker-compose.yml file is commented out by default:

# - ".:/app:rw"

If you uncomment this entry, the entire /app directory inside the container will be overridden by the application files from the host when using Docker Compose. This can be useful for development.

However you will now need to re-run any commands in the Dockerfile that change items within the /app directory as part of the build process, otherwise the file changes made by Dockerfile operations in the image will not be reflected in the container.

For convenience, all these commands are included in the setup.sh file. If you do need to map /app to the host filesystem, run:

docker-compose run web sh setup.sh

after any docker-compose build operations.

Launching the local server with Nginx#

The Dockerfile launches the server with Nginx:

CMD php /app/divio/run-env.php "/usr/bin/dumb-init nginx && php-fpm -R"

However when you start a local instance with docker-compose up, it uses the command in docker-compose.yml instead:

command: bash -c "chmod a+x /app/divio/run-locally.sh && php /app/divio/run-env.php /app/divio/run-locally.sh"

Comment this out to use Nginx locally with Docker Compose.

Deployment#

Your application is ready for deployment on our cloud platform. The basic steps are:

  • create an application on the Divio Control Panel, with any required services

  • push your code/connect your Git repository

  • deploy one or more cloud environments

These steps are covered in more detail in Deploy your application to Divio.