Reusable PHP Docker containers

It is a lot of work to build PHP containers over and over again, let alone the wait for containers to build. This project makes that life easier by providing fully reusable PHP base containers and extensions.

The main idea behind this project is based on the Bref development containers. This project provides a base PHP or PHP-FPM container and many prebuild extensions. All you have to do, is combine them into your own project.

How to use

Using this project is fairly easy. You start your Dockerfile with the base container. The base containers life in registry ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php and are versions like this: <PHP VERSION>[.<CONTAINER RELEASE VERSION>][-fpm]. Example for PHP-FPM version 8:

FROM ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php:8.1-fpm

Now lets say you want to use the extensions MySQL and Redis. Each extension lifes in its ow registry like ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-mysql for MySQL. The versionsing is the same as with the base image; <PHP VERSION>[.<CONTAINER RELEASE VERSION>]. All you have to do is copy the /opt dir from the extension image to the /opt directory in your image. You can add them to your Dockerfile like this:

COPY --from=ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-mysql:8.1 /opt /opt
COPY --from=ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-redis:8.1 /opt /opt

Now if you want to use some development tools like xDebug and use development settings, you can use the ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-dev image:

COPY --from=ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-dev:8.1 /opt /opt

To undo these dev settings, you can use the ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-prod AFTER the dev extension.

Check the example directory for a fully working example of the above within a multi-stage build.

Available extensions

See the list of available extensions below:

Extension	Container	Notes
amqp	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-amqp
bcmath	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-bcmath
composer	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-composer
curl	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-curl
datadog	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-datadog
gd	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-gd
intl	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-intl
mbstring	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-mbstring
mongodb	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-mongodb
mysql	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-mysql
nodejs	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-nodejs	Versioning based on node versions: 14, 16, 18 and 19
opcache	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-opcache
pcntl	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-pcntl
rdkafka	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-rdkafka
redis	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-redis
saxonc	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-saxonc	Only for PHP version 7.4
xdebug	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-xdebug
xml	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-xml
xsl	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-xsl
zip	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-zip

There are also some environment specific extensions available:

Extension	Container	Notes
dev	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-dev	Will set some development PHP settings and add xDebug
prod	ghcr.io/xip-online-applications/php-docker-containers/php-extra-prod	Will undo dev extension settings

Development

First you need to prepare your local environment by preparing buildx:

docker buildx create --name php-docker-containers --use --bootstrap --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64 --driver docker-container

Also authorize to the Github registry with your Github PAT:

echo "$GITHUB_TOKEN" | docker login ghcr.io -u "$GITHUB_ACTOR" --password-stdin

To develop a new extension, you need to make sure you do the following:

Add the extension to the `src/extensions directory (like the others)
Make sure your extension image is based on scratch with a copyable /opt directory
The build of your extension is added to .github/workflows/build-extensions.yaml
Add the extension to the README.md file at section Available extensions