docker-compose for nginx with php5-fpm using small alpine images

docker-compose.yml

version: '2'
services:
  php:
    image: php:5.6-fpm-alpine
    volumes:
     - data:/_data
     - ./site:/var/www/html:ro
    networks:
      - backend
    command: sh -c 'chown www-data /_data && exec php-fpm'
  nginx:
    image: nginx:stable-alpine
    volumes:
     - ./site:/var/www/html:ro
     - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro
    ports:
      - "8000:80"
    networks:
      - backend

networks:
  backend:

volumes:
  data:
    driver: local

nginx.conf

user nginx;
worker_processes  1;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log /dev/stdout  main;

    #sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    gzip  on;

    server {
        listen       80;
        server_name  example.com;

        location / {
            root   /var/www/html;
            index  index.php;
        }

        #error_page  404              /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   /var/www/html;
        }

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        location ~ \.php$ {
            root           html;
            fastcgi_pass   php:9000;
            fastcgi_index  index.php;
            fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www/html/$fastcgi_script_name;
            include        fastcgi_params;
        }

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        location ~ /\.ht {
            deny  all;
        }
    }
}

Main challenge with making the php-fpm and nginx images work together is that they both need access to the same files. Nginx needs to be able to find the php files to decide to forward the request to php-fpm, and will serve all static files. Php usually only requires the php files, but might need other files depending on the application.

With this compose file, the site files are kept outside of the docker images, in the checkout folder from which you run docker-compose. This has the added benefit of making it useable for development. If you want to build an image that ships the whole site, you end up adding the same files both to the nginx image and the php image. Alternatively, you can use a shared volume, but then you need a way to inject the site after the build, since volumes are only available during runtime.

All logs are sent to stdout and stderr. You can redirect them to a logging service by configuring logging, or by changing the nginx config to log to files in a volume instead.