Docker: How to organise an Laravel app with schedule and queue in a Docker way

Question

Hej there,

For some days I try to find a good solution for my Laravel app. I am using docker and docker compose to organise my stack and have splitted it into the following services:

• Nginx for serving the requests
• PHP-FPM for processing requests to the Laravel app passed from Nginx
• PHP-FPM for handling the queue of the Laravel app
• PHP-FPM for handling the schedule of the Laravel app
• MariaDB as database

The services with PHP-FPM use the same customized docker image that adds the necessary files for the Laravel app.

My problem is that I am not sure how I should provide the files of my Laravel app to the services. I can think of two ways:

1. Copy the files in the customized Dockerfile. With this approach I can deploy my app via a custom registry and start the queue and the schedule by changing the entrypoint in the docker-compose.yml. Downside is that I do not know how Nginx should access the files inside the container, especially the static assets. Also this makes things harder while in development.
2. Bind the files as volume into the container. This solves (almost) all downside problems of the first approach but I cannot think about a good solution for starting the queue and the schedule workers (in a Dockerish way).

I would be so thankful for any help and useful advice. After reading a lot of questions here at SO and other blog posts and watching some YouTube videos I am very, very confused.

Answer 1

you can install supervisor in Dockerfile and run necessary services inside it: cron, php-fpm, queue.

Dockerfile

FROM php:7.2-fpm-alpine
RUN set -ex \
  && apk add --update \
  ...
  supervisor

COPY supervisord.conf /etc/supervisord.conf

ADD crontab /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron
RUN chmod 0644 /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron \
    && crontab /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/supervisord", "-n", "-c", "/etc/supervisord.conf"]

supervisord.conf

[supervisord]
nodaemon=true

[unix_http_server]
file=/tmp/supervisord.sock
chmod=0700

[program:cron]
command=/usr/sbin/crond -f -l 8
stdout_logfile=/dev/stdout
stderr_logfile=/dev/stderr
stdout_logfile_maxbytes=0
stderr_logfile_maxbytes=0
autorestart=true
priority=10

[supervisorctl]
serverurl=unix:///tmp/supervisord.sock

[rpcinterface:supervisor]
supervisor.rpcinterface_factory = supervisor.rpcinterface:make_main_rpcinterface

[program:php-fpm]
command=php-fpm -F
autorestart=true
autorestart=true
priority=5
stdout_events_enabled=true
stderr_events_enabled=true

[include]
files = /etc/supervisor/conf.d/*.conf

crontab

* * * * * cd /var/www/crm && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Answer 2

In a dockerish way what you can do is separate out the services in a different containers so that the queue and cron jobs does not affect your base main application. You can take a look at a docker-compose file for reference

# Dockerfile
FROM php:8.1-fpm

# Other Dockerfile codes

EXPOSE 9000
CMD ["php-fpm"]

# End of Dockerfile 


# docker-compose.yml

version: '3'
services:
  
  #PHP Service
  laravel-app:
    image: laravel-app # Build the application image based on Dockerfile present in the root directory 
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    container_name: laravel-app
    tty: true
    environment:
      SERVICE_NAME: laravel-app
      SERVICE_TAGS: dev
    working_dir: /var/www
    volumes:
       - ./:/var/www
       - ./php/local.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/local.ini
    networks:
      - laravel-network

  # Queue Worker Service
  laravel-queue-worker:
    image: laravel-app  # Reference the existing image built for laravel-app
    container_name: laravel-queue-worker
    tty: true
    environment:
      SERVICE_NAME: laravel-queue-worker
      SERVICE_TAGS: dev
    working_dir: /var/www
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www
      - ./php/local.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/local.ini
    networks:
      - laravel-network
    command: php artisan queue:work --queue=default --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
    restart: always 
  # Scheduler Service
  laravel-scheduler-worker:
    image: laravel-app  # Reference the existing image built for laravel-app
    container_name: laravel-scheduler-worker
    tty: true
    environment:
      SERVICE_NAME: laravel-scheduler-worker
      SERVICE_TAGS: dev
    working_dir: /var/www
    volumes:
      - ./:/var/www
      - ./php/local.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/local.ini
    networks:
      - laravel-network
    command: php artisan schedule:run
    restart: always 
#Docker Networks
networks:
  laravel-network:
    name: laravel-network
    driver: bridge

Here, first we create the laravel application image and then use the same image to run the queue worker and task scheduler into a separate container. Your nginx service will be serving only from the laravel-app container.