Create a Docker Compose container with Apache + PHP + MySQL (XAMPP with Docker)

Tiempo de lectura: 3 minutos

Reading time: 3 minutes

Continuing with the series of Docker Compose tutorials, based on the previous tutorial “Associate a Docker file to have a custom image (Apache + PHP + Python) within Docker Compose”, we will now create a XAMPP or LAMPP service that includes Apache2, PHP, and MySQL. This will be achieved by leveraging Docker containers and linking them together using Docker Compose.

Using the base code, download the Github code

version: "3"
# Indicate the Docker Compose version we are using
# Then define the services we are going to implement
services:
  # Specify the desired service name
  my_apache_service:
    # Indicate the folder where we save the Dockerfile
    build:
      context: ./Dockerfile
      # Specify the Dockerfile for this container
      dockerfile: apache_file
    # We remove this line as it is replaced by the Dockerfile
    # image: php:7.0-apache
    container_name: apache-container
    volumes:
      # Folder where we will save the web files: internal Docker folder
      - ./www/:/var/www/html
    expose:
      # Port that we want to expose to share it with other containers
      - 80
    ports:
      # Port of our machine: port inside Docker (always 80 for Apache or 443 for SSL)
      - 80:80

Let’s add the MySQL container using mysql:5.7

mysql_container:
    image: mysql:5.7
    container_name: mysql-container
    environment:
        MYSQL_DATABASE: db
        # You can use any username you want; in this example, we use "test"
        MYSQL_USER: test
        # Password for the MySQL user
        MYSQL_PASSWORD: testp
        # Root password
        MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    volumes:
      # Mount a volume for MySQL to persist the database data
      - ./mysql:/var/lib/mysql
    expose:
      - 3306
    ports:
      - 3306:3306

We create the container, exposing the default MySQL port 3306.

We also create a volume called “mysql” where we can add our initial database if we have one. This container is capable of loading it automatically.

Now let’s join the two containers within the same Docker Compose file, starting with MySQL.

version: "3"
services:
  mysql_container:
    image: mysql:5.7
    container_name: mysql-container
    environment:
        MYSQL_DATABASE: db
        MYSQL_USER: test
        MYSQL_PASSWORD: testp
        MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    volumes:
      - ./mysql:/var/lib/mysql
    expose:
      - 3306
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
  my_apache_service:
    build:
      context: ./Dockerfile
      dockerfile: apache_file
    container_name: apache-container
    volumes:
      - ./www/:/var/www/html
    expose:
      - 80
    ports:
      - 80:80
    links:
      - mysql_container

Once the two containers are joined, we need to establish a link between the Apache container and MySQL. To do this, we add:

  links:
      - mysql_container

The final configuration looks as follows:

version: "3"
services:
  mysql_container:
    image: mysql:5.7
    container_name: mysql-container
    environment:
        MYSQL_DATABASE: db
        MYSQL_USER: test
        MYSQL_PASSWORD: testp
        MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    volumes:
      - ./mysql:/var/lib/mysql
    expose:
      - 3306
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
  my_apache_service:
    build:
      context: ./DockerfileDockerfile
dockerfile: apache_file
container_name: apache-container
volumes:
- ./www/:/var/www/html
expose:
- 80
ports:
- 80:80
links:
- mysql_container

NOTE: We have now created a link to the MySQL container, which we named "mysql_container". This means that when we establish a connection in PHP with MySQL, we will need to use "mysql_container" instead of "localhost" (which is the host specified in our connection). In other words, the connection would be as follows:

$conn = new mysqli('mysql_container', 'test', 'testp');

Now everything is ready for deployment.

The folder structure looks like this:

And now we can deploy our Dockerized XAMPP.

sudo docker-compose up -d

Download the code HERE from GitHub.

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