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docker |
Beside using Vagrant, another easy way to get a virtual development or production environment up and running is Docker. Docker helps you to provide Linux containers for all kind of applications. There are many helpful docker images which could provide you with other great services without the need to install these services on your local machine, e.g. MySQL or PostgreSQL and a lot more. Have a look at the [Docker Hub Registry] docker-hub to search a list of available pre-built containers, which you can then run and use in very few steps.
After you installed docker on your machine, you can start an Apache with PHP support in one step.
The following command will download a fully functional Apache installation with the latest PHP version and provide the
directory /path/to/your/php/files at http://localhost:8080:
{% highlight console %} docker run -d --name my-php-webserver -p 8080:80 -v /path/to/your/php/files:/var/www/html/ php:apache {% endhighlight %}
After running docker run your container is initialized and running.
If you would like to stop or start your container again, you can use the provided name attribute and simply run
docker stop my-php-webserver and docker start my-php-webserver without providing the above mentioned parameters
again.
The commands mentioned above only show a quick way to run an Apache web server with PHP support but there are a lot more things that you can do with Docker. One of the most important things for PHP developers will be linking your web server to a database instance, for example. How this could be done is well described within the [Docker User Guide] docker-doc.