Announcing Docker for PHP Developers

Published on January 23rd, 2018 by Eric L. Barnes

Over the past year, Laravel News writer Paul Redmond, has been working on a Docker book called Docker for PHP Developers, a hands-on, tutorial style book on using Docker and PHP in development. Today, the book is available for purchase!

There are two options available for purchase at the time of writing, with a screencast bundle in the works:

The Book Only – ~~$39.99~~ $29.99 (use offer code “laravel-news” for 25% off)
The Starter Bundle ~~$49.99~~ $39.99 (use offer code “laravel-news” for 25% off)

The book is a 222-page custom, hand-crafted PDF, and includes basic MOBI and ePub formats.

The starter bundle includes the book, plus two starter projects with Docker builds for Laravel and Symfony 4, which are an opinionated example of how to create production-ready Docker images for Laravel, capable of running the web application, a scheduler, and a queue container using the same Docker image build.

According to Paul, this course is an efficient way to learn the ins and outs of Docker development—using a familiar language (PHP)—without the pain of learning it all on your own.

Learn concepts that can get a little confusing to newcomers:

How to organize your projects with Docker configuration files
How to manage containers (start, stop, remove, etc.)
How to install PHP Composer packages (including private packages)
How to configure Xdebug and profiling
How to retrofit Docker with a legacy project
How to automate Docker builds
How to orchestrate multiple services like Redis and MySQL
How to work with volumes for a quick development workflow
How to deploy Docker images

This book is fit for beginners and intermediates, but could also be useful to more experienced Docker users wanting to compare/contrast different techniques for using Docker with PHP projects.

As you go through the book, you will set up multiple projects and manage Docker containers, which means that you’ll get plenty of wrench time using Docker with PHP frameworks.

Paul had this to say about his book:

I have had this course in my head for about three years, and started writing about year ago. The course is a culmination of everything I’ve learned building numerous Docker projects for PHP development. You will learn how to build a LAMP application from scratch, and then move on to configuring development tools, automating project image builds, and finally to deploying applications.

One of my favorite chapters to write was on using Docker with legacy projects. Although the goal is to keep projects updated, we’ve all had those legacy projects in our lives. Docker is a great way to streamline your legacy environment so you can start the upgrade process and run older apps more consistently while you begin upgrading.

Here’s the full chapter outline of the book: