Drupal development with Docker

Quick and easy to use Docker container for your local Drupal development. It contains a LAMP stack and an SSH server, along with an up to date version of Drush. It is based on Debian Wheezy.

Summary

This image contains:

• Apache 2.2
• MySQL 5.5
• PHP 5.4
• Drush 7.0
• Drupal 7.38
• Composer
• PHPMyAdmin
• Blackfire

When launching, the container will contain a fully-installed, ready to use Drupal site.

Passwords

• Drupal: admin:admin
• MySQL: root: (no password)
• SSH: root:root

Exposed ports

• 80 (Apache)
• 22 (SSH)
• 3306 (MySQL)

Environment variables

If you wish to enable Blackfire for profiling, set the following environment variables:

• BLACKFIREIO_SERVER_ID: Your Blackfire server ID
• BLACKFIREIO_SERVER_TOKEN: Your Blackfire server token

Tutorial

You can read more about this image here.

Installation

Github

Clone the repository locally and build it:

git clone https://github.com/wadmiraal/docker-drupal.git
cd docker-drupal
docker build -t yourname/drupal .

Docker repository

Get the image:

docker pull wadmiraal/drupal

Running it

For optimum usage, map some local directories to the container for easier development. I personally create at least a modules/ directory which will contain my custom modules. You can do the same for your themes.

The container exposes its 80 port (Apache), its 3306 port (MySQL) and its 22 port (SSH). Make good use of this by forwarding your local ports. You should at least forward to port 80 (using -p local_port:80, like -p 8080:80). A good idea is to also forward port 22, so you can use Drush from your local machine using aliases, and directly execute commands inside the container, without attaching to it.

Here's an example just running the container and forwarding localhost:8080 and localhost:8022 to the container:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 -p 8022:22 -t wadmiraal/drupal

Writing code locally

Here's an example running the container, forwarding port 8080 like before, but also mounting Drupal's sites/all/modules/custom/ folder to my local modules/ folder. I can then start writing code on my local machine, directly in this folder, and it will be available inside the container:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 -v `pwd`/modules:/var/www/sites/all/modules/custom -t wadmiraal/drupal

Using Drush

Using Drush aliases, I can directly execute Drush commands locally and have them be executed inside the container. Create a new aliases file in your home directory and add the following:

# ~/.drush/docker.aliases.drushrc.php
<?php
$aliases['wadmiraal_drupal'] = array(
  'root' => '/var/www',
  'remote-user' => 'root',
  'remote-host' => 'localhost',
  'ssh-options' => '-p 8022', // Or any other port you specify when running the container
);

Next, if you do not wish to type the root password everytime you run a Drush command, copy the content of your local SSH public key (usually ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub; read here on how to generate one if you don't have it). SSH into the running container:

# If you forwarded another port than 8022, change accordingly.
# Password is "root".
ssh root@localhost -p 8022

Once you're logged in, add the contents of your id_rsa.pub file to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. Exit.

You should now be able to call:

drush @docker.wadmiraal_drupal cc all

This will clear the cache of your Drupal site. All other commands will function as well.

Running tests

If you want to run tests, you may need to take some additional steps. Drupal's Simpletest will use cURL to simulate user interactions with a freshly installed site when running tests. This "virtual" site resides under http://localhost:[forwarded ip]. This gives issues, though, as the container uses port 80. By default, the container's virtual host will actually listen to any port, but you still need to tell Apache on which ports it should bind. By default, it will bind on 80 and 8080, so if you use the above examples, you can start running your tests straight away. But, if you choose to forward to a different port, you must add it to Apache's configuration and restart Apache. You can simply do the following:

# If you forwarded to another port than 8022, change accordingly.
# Password is "root".
ssh root@localhost -p 8022
# Change the port number accordingly. This example is if you forward
# to port 8081.
echo "Listen 8081" >> /etc/apache2/ports.conf
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Or, shorthand:

ssh root@localhost -p 8022 -C 'echo "Listen 8081" >> /etc/apache2/ports.conf && /etc/init.d/apache2 restart'

MySQL and PHPMyAdmin

PHPMyAdmin is available at /phpmyadmin. The MySQL port 3306 is exposed. The root account for MySQL is root (no password).

Blackfire

Blackfire is a free PHP profiling tool. It offers very detailed and comprehensive insight into your code. To use Blackfire, you must first register on the site. Once registered, you will get a server ID and a server token. You pass these to the container, and it will fire up Blackfire automatically.

Example:

docker run -it --rm -e BLACKFIREIO_SERVER_ID="[your id here]" -e BLACKFIREIO_SERVER_TOKEN="[your token here]" -p 8022:22 -p 8080:80 wadmiraal/drupal

You can now start profiling your application.