Docker for Laravel in Production: A Complete Guide

Why Docker?

Docker eliminates "works on my machine" by packaging your application with its dependencies. The same container runs identically in development, staging, and production.

Production Dockerfile

FROM php:8.3-fpm-alpine as base

# Install system dependencies
RUN apk add --no-cache \
    nginx \
    supervisor \
    libpng-dev \
    libzip-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql gd zip opcache

# Install Composer
COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

WORKDIR /var/www/html

# Production stage
FROM base as production

# Copy application
COPY . .

# Install dependencies (no dev)
RUN composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader --no-interaction

# Build assets
RUN npm ci && npm run build && rm -rf node_modules

# Set permissions
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data storage bootstrap/cache

# Copy configs
COPY docker/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
COPY docker/supervisord.conf /etc/supervisor/conf.d/supervisord.conf
COPY docker/php.ini /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/custom.ini

EXPOSE 80

CMD ["/usr/bin/supervisord", "-c", "/etc/supervisor/conf.d/supervisord.conf"]

Nginx Configuration

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html/public;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known) {
        deny all;
    }
}

Docker Compose for Development

version: '3.8'
services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      target: base
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - mysql
      - redis

  mysql:
    image: mysql:8.0
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret
    volumes:
      - mysql_data:/var/lib/mysql

  redis:
    image: redis:alpine

  queue:
    build:
      context: .
      target: base
    command: php artisan queue:work
    depends_on:
      - mysql
      - redis

volumes:
  mysql_data:

Health Checks

HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=3s --start-period=5s --retries=3 \
    CMD curl -f http://localhost/health || exit 1

Multi-Stage Builds

Multi-stage builds keep production images small by excluding build tools:

# Build stage has Node.js for asset compilation
FROM node:18-alpine as assets
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

# Production stage only has PHP
FROM php:8.3-fpm-alpine as production
COPY --from=assets /app/public/build /var/www/html/public/build

Conclusion

Docker provides consistency across environments and simplifies deployment. Start with a solid Dockerfile, use multi-stage builds for optimization, and implement health checks for orchestration.