Docker makes getting started with a new projects much easier, saving you hours of setting up individual tools for it to work. Laravel is no exception. Here's how you can set up a new Laravel project using Docker, complete with a MySQL database.

Step 1: Create a new project directory

First, we're going to set up a new empty directory, which will be houising our Laravel project. Call it myApp or whatever else you like:

mkdir myApp
cd myApp

Step 2: Create a Docker Compose file

Next we're going to define our two containers:

• One for our Laravel project which will container all the PHP code necessary.

• One for the MySQL database. If you'd rather use MariaDB, replace image: mysql:8.0 with image: mariadb.

services:
  web:
    image: bitnami/laravel
    volumes:
      - ./app:/app
    working_dir: /app
    environment:
      - LARAVEL_DATABASE_HOST=db
      - LARAVEL_DATABASE_USER=root
      - LARAVEL_DATABASE_NAME=laravel
      - LARAVEL_DATABASE_PASSWORD=pass1
      - LARAVEL_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER=3306
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8000:8000

  db:
    image: mysql:8.0
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=pass1
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=laravel

What is happening here?

Docker Compose is a tool by Docker that helps to build multiple components at the same time. Really helpful if you're running a project with multiple moving parts, like a database.

In this case, web is the Laravel project and db is the database. The web container is created from the base image bitnami/laravel, which is a handy image which has Laravel preinstalled. It adds the app folder as a "volume" to the container so it can run it. The file gives the container the database credentials so it can connect to it, and it also exposes port 8080 so you can open the site with your browser!

The db container is a simple container with MySQL installed. The file gives it the password for the root user and also a name for a database so it can create it.

That's it!

 Step 3: Run the containers

Now that we have our docker-compose.yml file in place, we can give Docker the go-ahead to create both containers with a simple command:

docker compose up

Step 4: Check your site

Give it a few seconds, and your site should be up and running. You should see the following line in your terminal:

INFO  Server running on [http://0.0.0.0:8000].

To open it, open http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Success!

Enjoy your new Laravel site!