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Modern Laravel 10 Deployment with Docker (2024–2025 Best Practices)

Fadhli Ari Pratama
Fadhli Ari Pratama
Open-Source Enthusiast
  • Best Practice

🚀 A modern, production-friendly approach to running Laravel 10 with Docker on Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 — cleaner, safer, and easier to maintain.

📦 Stack Overview

Section titled “📦 Stack Overview”
  • Laravel 10
  • PHP-FPM 8.1+
  • MySQL 8.0
  • phpMyAdmin (optional, non-production)
  • Nginx (Reverse Proxy)
  • Docker Compose v2

🧠 Key Improvements vs Legacy Setup

Section titled “🧠 Key Improvements vs Legacy Setup”
  • No static container IPs
  • No exposed database ports (internal network only)
  • Environment variables via .env
  • Named volumes for persistence
  • Docker Compose v2 (docker compose)
  • phpMyAdmin marked as optional / non-prod

🐳 Step 1 — Install Docker Engine (Official Method)

Section titled “🐳 Step 1 — Install Docker Engine (Official Method)”
Terminal window
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
Terminal window
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
Terminal window
echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null


sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Verify:

Terminal window
docker version
docker compose version

📁 Step 2 — Project Structure

Section titled “📁 Step 2 — Project Structure”
  • Directorylaravel-docker/
    • Directoryapp/ # Laravel source code
      • …
    • Directorydocker/
      • Directorynginx/
        • default.conf
      • Directoryphp/
        • Dockerfile
        • php.ini
    • docker-compose.yml
    • .env

🔐 Step 3 — Environment Configuration (.env)

Section titled “🔐 Step 3 — Environment Configuration (.env)”
APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost


DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=db
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=laravel
DB_PASSWORD=secret

🛠️ Step 4 — Dockerfile PHP-FPM

Section titled “🛠️ Step 4 — Dockerfile PHP-FPM”

docker/php/Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.1-fpm


RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    git curl zip unzip libpng-dev libonig-dev libxml2-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd


COPY --from=composer:2 /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer


WORKDIR /var/www/html

🧩 Step 5 — docker-compose.yml (Clean & Modern)

Section titled “🧩 Step 5 — docker-compose.yml (Clean & Modern)”
services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: docker/php/Dockerfile
    container_name: laravel-app
    volumes:
      - ./app:/var/www/html
    env_file:
      - .env
    depends_on:
      - db


  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    container_name: nginx
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    volumes:
      - ./app:/var/www/html
      - ./docker/nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    depends_on:
      - app


  db:
    image: mysql:8.0
    container_name: mysql
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_USER: laravel
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: secret
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    volumes:
      - dbdata:/var/lib/mysql


  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin
    container_name: phpmyadmin
    ports:
      - "8081:80"
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
    profiles:
      - debug


volumes:
  dbdata:

🌐 Step 6 — Nginx Configuration

Section titled “🌐 Step 6 — Nginx Configuration”

docker/nginx/default.conf:

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


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


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

🚀 Step 7 — Run the Stack

Section titled “🚀 Step 7 — Run the Stack”
Terminal window
docker compose up -d --build

Generate Laravel key:

Terminal window
docker compose exec app php artisan key:generate

Access the app:

🧠 Production Notes

Section titled “🧠 Production Notes”
  • Use .env.production
  • Disable phpMyAdmin
  • Add HTTPS (Traefik / Nginx + Certbot)
  • Use non-root containers if needed
  • Consider queue & scheduler containers

✅ Final Thoughts

Section titled “✅ Final Thoughts”

This setup is intentionally boring — and that’s a good thing.
Simple Compose files, predictable networking, and fewer moving parts mean fewer 3 AM incidents.

If you’re migrating from an older Laravel Docker setup, this structure is a solid baseline going forward.

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