[php] How to correctly link php-fpm and Nginx Docker containers?

I am trying to link 2 separate containers:

• nginx:latest
• php:fpm

The problem is that php scripts do not work. Perhaps the php-fpm configuration is incorrect. Here is the source code, which is in my repository. Here is the file docker-compose.yml:

nginx:
    build: .
    ports:
        - "80:80"
        - "443:443"
    volumes:
        - ./:/var/www/test/
    links:
        - fpm
fpm:
    image: php:fpm
    ports:
        - "9000:9000"

and Dockerfile which I used to build a custom image based on the nginx one:

FROM nginx

# Change Nginx config here...
RUN rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
ADD ./default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/

Lastly, here is my custom Nginx virtual host config:

server {
    listen  80;

    server_name localhost;
    root /var/www/test;

    error_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;

    location / {
        # try to serve file directly, fallback to app.php
        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/.+\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass 192.168.59.103:9000;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
    }
}

Could anybody help me configure these containers correctly to execute php scripts?

P.S. I run containers via docker-composer like this:

docker-compose up

from the project root directory.

As previous answers have solved for, but should be stated very explicitly: the php code needs to live in the php-fpm container, while the static files need to live in the nginx container. For simplicity, most people have just attached all the code to both, as I have also done below. If the future, I will likely separate out these different parts of the code in my own projects as to minimize which containers have access to which parts.

Updated my example files below with this latest revelation (thank you @alkaline )

This seems to be the minimum setup for docker 2.0 forward (because things got a lot easier in docker 2.0)

docker-compose.yml:

version: '2'
services:
  php:
    container_name: test-php
    image: php:fpm
    volumes:
      - ./code:/var/www/html/site
  nginx:
    container_name: test-nginx
    image: nginx:latest
    volumes:
      - ./code:/var/www/html/site
      - ./site.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/site.conf:ro
    ports:
      - 80:80

(UPDATED the docker-compose.yml above: For sites that have css, javascript, static files, etc, you will need those files accessible to the nginx container. While still having all the php code accessible to the fpm container. Again, because my base code is a messy mix of css, js, and php, this example just attaches all the code to both containers)

In the same folder:

site.conf:

server
{
    listen   80;
    server_name site.local.[YOUR URL].com;

    root /var/www/html/site;
    index index.php;

    location /
    {
        try_files $uri =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass   test-php:9000;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include        fastcgi_params;
    }
}

In folder code:

./code/index.php:

<?php
phpinfo();

and don't forget to update your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 site.local.[YOUR URL].com

and run your docker-compose up

$docker-compose up -d

and try the URL from your favorite browser

site.local.[YOUR URL].com/index.php

As pointed out before, the problem was that the files were not visible by the fpm container. However to share data among containers the recommended pattern is using data-only containers (as explained in this article).

Long story short: create a container that just holds your data, share it with a volume, and link this volume in your apps with volumes_from.

Using compose (1.6.2 in my machine), the docker-compose.yml file would read:

version: "2"
services:
  nginx:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: nginx/Dockerfile
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    links:
      - fpm
    volumes_from:
      - data
  fpm:
    image: php:fpm
    volumes_from:
      - data
  data:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: data/Dockerfile
    volumes:
      - /var/www/html

Note that data publishes a volume that is linked to the nginx and fpm services. Then the Dockerfile for the data service, that contains your source code:

FROM busybox

# content
ADD path/to/source /var/www/html

And the Dockerfile for nginx, that just replaces the default config:

FROM nginx

# config
ADD config/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d

For the sake of completion, here's the config file required for the example to work:

server {
    listen 0.0.0.0:80;

    root /var/www/html;

    location / {
        index index.php index.html;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass fpm:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/$fastcgi_script_name;
    }
}

which just tells nginx to use the shared volume as document root, and sets the right config for nginx to be able to communicate with the fpm container (i.e.: the right HOST:PORT, which is fpm:9000 thanks to the hostnames defined by compose, and the SCRIPT_FILENAME).

I know it is kind an old post, but I've had the same problem and couldn't understand why your code didn't work. After a LOT of tests I've found out why.

It seems like fpm receives the full path from nginx and tries to find the files in the fpm container, so it must be the exactly the same as server.root in the nginx config, even if it doesn't exist in the nginx container.

To demonstrate:

docker-compose.yml

nginx:
    build: .
    ports:
        - "80:80"
    links:
        - fpm
fpm:
    image: php:fpm
    ports:
        - ":9000"

    # seems like fpm receives the full path from nginx
    # and tries to find the files in this dock, so it must
    # be the same as nginx.root
    volumes:
        - ./:/complex/path/to/files/

/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

server {
    listen  80;

    # this path MUST be exactly as docker-compose.fpm.volumes,
    # even if it doesn't exist in this dock.
    root /complex/path/to/files;

    location / {
        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/.+\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass fpm:9000;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }
}

Dockerfile

FROM nginx:latest
COPY ./default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/

I think we also need to give the fpm container the volume, dont we? So =>

fpm:
    image: php:fpm
    volumes:
        - ./:/var/www/test/

If i dont do this, i run into this exception when firing a request, as fpm cannot find requested file:

[error] 6#6: *4 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream, client: 172.17.42.1, server: localhost, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://172.17.0.81:9000", host: "localhost"

For anyone else getting

Nginx 403 error: directory index of [folder] is forbidden

when using index.php while index.html works perfectly and having included index.php in the index in the server block of their site config in sites-enabled

server {
    listen 80;

    # this path MUST be exactly as docker-compose php volumes
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;

    index index.php

    ...
}

Make sure your nginx.conf file at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf actually loads your site config in the http block...

http {

    ...

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

    # Load our websites config 
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

New Answer

Docker Compose has been updated. They now have a version 2 file format.

Version 2 files are supported by Compose 1.6.0+ and require a Docker Engine of version 1.10.0+.

They now support the networking feature of Docker which when run sets up a default network called myapp_default

From their documentation your file would look something like the below:

version: '2'

services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
  fpm:
    image: phpfpm
  nginx
    image: nginx

As these containers are automatically added to the default myapp_default network they would be able to talk to each other. You would then have in the Nginx config:

fastcgi_pass fpm:9000;

Also as mentioned by @treeface in the comments remember to ensure PHP-FPM is listening on port 9000, this can be done by editing /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf where you will need listen = 9000.

Old Answer

I have kept the below here for those using older version of Docker/Docker compose and would like the information.

I kept stumbling upon this question on google when trying to find an answer to this question but it was not quite what I was looking for due to the Q/A emphasis on docker-compose (which at the time of writing only has experimental support for docker networking features). So here is my take on what I have learnt.

Docker has recently deprecated its link feature in favour of its networks feature

Therefore using the Docker Networks feature you can link containers by following these steps. For full explanations on options read up on the docs linked previously.

First create your network

docker network create --driver bridge mynetwork

Next run your PHP-FPM container ensuring you open up port 9000 and assign to your new network (mynetwork).

docker run -d -p 9000 --net mynetwork --name php-fpm php:fpm

The important bit here is the --name php-fpm at the end of the command which is the name, we will need this later.

Next run your Nginx container again assign to the network you created.

docker run --net mynetwork --name nginx -d -p 80:80 nginx:latest

For the PHP and Nginx containers you can also add in --volumes-from commands etc as required.

Now comes the Nginx configuration. Which should look something similar to this:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;

    root /path/to/my/webroot;

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass php-fpm:9000; 
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Notice the fastcgi_pass php-fpm:9000; in the location block. Thats saying contact container php-fpm on port 9000. When you add containers to a Docker bridge network they all automatically get a hosts file update which puts in their container name against their IP address. So when Nginx sees that it will know to contact the PHP-FPM container you named php-fpm earlier and assigned to your mynetwork Docker network.

You can add that Nginx config either during the build process of your Docker container or afterwards its up to you.