PHP and Docker: Containerizing Applications

The book "PHP and Docker: Containerizing Applications" is a comprehensive guide that will help PHP developers master modern approaches to packaging, delivering, and running applications using Docker. You will learn how to turn dependency chaos into a predictable and reproducible environment that works identically on a local machine, development server, and in production.

Who is this book for?

• PHP developers of any level — from juniors encountering containerization for the first time to seniors looking to optimize pipelines and architecture.
• DevOps engineers who need specialized information on working with PHP (FPM, Nginx, Composer, Xdebug).
• Team leads and architects planning a transition to a microservice architecture or implementing CI/CD.

What will you learn?

• How to create a Dockerfile for a PHP application: choosing a base image, installing extensions, optimizing layers.
• Setting up Docker Compose for a typical LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL/PostgreSQL).
• Working with Xdebug and IDEs in containers — debugging without pain.
• Managing dependencies via Composer inside a container.
• Building multi-stage images to reduce the size of production artifacts.
• Security: don't run containers as root, secrets, isolation.
• Orchestration: Docker Swarm and Kubernetes for PHP projects (basic scenarios).
• CI/CD: automating build, testing, and deployment with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI.

Why should you read it?

Containerization has become the de facto standard in web development. This book doesn't overload you with theory — each section contains practical examples, ready-to-use configs, and an analysis of common mistakes. You'll save weeks of "fiddling around" with environment setup and can focus on the code.

At the end of the book, a full-fledged project awaits you: deploying a multi-service PHP application (Symfony API + queue worker + Laravel admin panel) in a production Kubernetes cluster with monitoring and logging.

The book is written in a lively style, with humor and real stories from the author's experience. It is suitable both for self-study and for corporate team training.