---
title: Use containers for PHP development
linkTitle: Develop your app
weight: 20
keywords: php, development
description: Learn how to develop your PHP application locally using containers.
aliases:
  - /language/php/develop/
  - /guides/language/php/develop/
---

## Prerequisites

Complete [Containerize a PHP application](containerize.md).

## Overview

In this section, you'll learn how to set up a development environment for your containerized application. This includes:

- Adding a local database and persisting data
- Adding phpMyAdmin to interact with the database
- Configuring Compose to automatically update your running Compose services as
  you edit and save your code
- Creating a development container that contains the dev dependencies

## Add a local database and persist data

You can use containers to set up local services, like a database.
To do this for the sample application, you'll need to do the following:

- Update the `Dockerfile` to install extensions to connect to the database
- Update the `compose.yaml` file to add a database service and volume to persist data

### Update the Dockerfile to install extensions

To install PHP extensions, you need to update the `Dockerfile`. Open your
Dockerfile in an IDE or text editor and then update the contents. The following
`Dockerfile` includes one new line that installs the `pdo` and `pdo_mysql`
extensions. All comments have been removed.

```dockerfile {hl_lines=11}
# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1

FROM composer:lts as deps
WORKDIR /app
RUN --mount=type=bind,source=composer.json,target=composer.json \
    --mount=type=bind,source=composer.lock,target=composer.lock \
    --mount=type=cache,target=/tmp/cache \
    composer install --no-dev --no-interaction

FROM php:8.2-apache as final
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql
RUN mv "$PHP_INI_DIR/php.ini-production" "$PHP_INI_DIR/php.ini"
COPY --from=deps app/vendor/ /var/www/html/vendor
COPY ./src /var/www/html
USER www-data
```

For more details about installing PHP extensions, see the [Official Docker Image for PHP](https://hub.docker.com/_/php).

### Update the compose.yaml file to add a db and persist data

Open the `compose.yaml` file in an IDE or text editor. You'll notice it
already contains commented-out instructions for a PostgreSQL database and volume. For this application, you'll use MariaDB. For more details about MariaDB, see the [MariaDB Official Docker image](https://hub.docker.com/_/mariadb).

Open the `src/database.php` file in an IDE or text editor. You'll notice that it reads environment variables in order to connect to the database.

In the `compose.yaml` file, you'll need to update the following:

1. Uncomment and update the database instructions for MariaDB.
2. Add a secret to the server service to pass in the database password.
3. Add the database connection environment variables to the server service.
4. Uncomment the volume instructions to persist data.

The following is the updated `compose.yaml` file. All comments have been removed.

```yaml
services:
  server:
    build:
      context: .
    ports:
      - 9000:80
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
    secrets:
      - db-password
    environment:
      - PASSWORD_FILE_PATH=/run/secrets/db-password
      - DB_HOST=db
      - DB_NAME=example
      - DB_USER=root
  db:
    image: mariadb
    restart: always
    user: root
    secrets:
      - db-password
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      - MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/db-password
      - MARIADB_DATABASE=example
    expose:
      - 3306
    healthcheck:
      test:
        [
          "CMD",
          "/usr/local/bin/healthcheck.sh",
          "--su-mysql",
          "--connect",
          "--innodb_initialized",
        ]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
volumes:
  db-data:
secrets:
  db-password:
    file: db/password.txt
```

> [!NOTE]
>
> To learn more about the instructions in the Compose file, see [Compose file