Running php-fpm and Nginx in Docker

Php-fpm is an advanced and highly efficient processor for php. In order for your php files to be viewable in a web browser, php-fpm needs to be coupled with a web server, such as nginx. In this tutorial we will show how to setup php-fpm and nginx is docker.

1. Create a directory for your files 

$ sudo mkdir phpfpm

2. Create a network for the containers to use. This makes sure that we can use container's name in the configuration file.

$ docker network create php-network

3. Create nginx config file

$ cd phpfpm

$ cat > default.conf <<EOF

server {

    listen  80;    

# this path MUST be exactly as docker-compose.fpm.volumes,

    # even if it doesn't exist in this dock.

    root /complex/path/to/files;

    location / {

        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;

    }

    location ~ ^/.+\.php(/|$) {

        fastcgi_pass fpm:9000;

        include fastcgi_params;

        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; 

    }

}

EOF

4. Create an index.php file with some random php code (we are using phpinfo() to make it easier)

$ cat > index.php <<EOF

<?php phpinfo(); ?> 

EOF

5. Run a php-fpm container, in detached and intaractive mode, using php-network, and we mount /home/user/phpfpm to /var/www/html in container

$ docker run -dit --name fpm --network php-network -v /home/user/phpfpm:/var/www/html

6. Run an nginx container in detached and intaractive mode, using php-network, and we mount /home/user/phpfpm/default.conf to /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf in container

$ docker run -dit --name nginx --network php-network -v /home/user/phpfpm/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf -p 80:80 nginx

7. Open a browser, and browse to http://localhost, you should now be able to see the PHPinfo page. 

Of course, there is an easier way to set this up using docker-compose. We will cover that in another post.