PHP for DevOps Engineer

PHP is a server-side scripting language mainly for web development. It is an Interpreted language so it does not require a compiler.

PHP runs on the server rather than the client’s browser because PHP interprets the .php code into HTML and send it to the client’s browser.

⭐ Other client-side languages like javascript run in the user’s browser.

How does PHP work?

1. Client Request: When a user requests a PHP webpage, that browser sends a request to the web server.

2. Web Server Processes Request: The web server (like Apache or Nginx) receives the request and recognizes that it’s a required PHP webpage. Then it hands over the file to the PHP interpreter.

3. PHP Interpreter Executes Code: The PHP interpreter processes the PHP code within the PHP file.

4. Generate HTML: After processing the PHP file, it generates HTML (or other web-compatible output) as the response content.

5. Send Response to Browser: The web server sends the generated HTML back to the client's browser, which renders the content.

Use of Dependency Manager?

Dependency manager is an important tool that helps us manage libraries and packages required for our PHP application.

There are multiple Dependency managers but the most widely used dependency manager for PHP is Composer.

• Composer makes it simple to manage our project's dependencies through a single composer.json file.

• You can add dependencies using the composer command:

composer require monolog/monolog

This command updates the composer.json file and installs the package.

• To install the dependencies listed in composer.json

composer install

• To update all dependencies to their latest versions

composer update

Example for composer.json file

{
    "name": "my-php-project",
    "description": "A simple PHP project.",
    "require": {
        "monolog/monolog": "2.3.0",
        "guzzlehttp/guzzle": "^7.0" 
    }
}

Logging:

• PHP applications typically use logging libraries like Monolog, Built-in error_log() function, Log to a Database or Laravel Logging (if using Laravel).

• Using these tools, we can set up robust logging mechanisms for our PHP application, making it easier to monitor and debug our application.

Environment variables:

• In PHP, configuration settings are typically placed in a file named config.php. But nowadays environment-specific configurations are kept in a .env file for managing environment variables.

• Especially for applications coded with frameworks such as Laravel, the configuration settings of such applications like ports, and database connection strings are stored using this .env.

  Example:

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=password
DB_NAME=example_db
APP_DEBUG=true 
APP_URL=http://example.com

Containerizing the PHP application:

1. Use the official PHP 8.0 image installed with the Apache web server.

2. Set the working directory in the container to /var/www

3. Install PHP extensions required by the application.

4. Copy the files into the container directory.

5. Enables the Apache mod_rewrite module, commonly used for URL rewriting in PHP applications.

6. This line indicates that the application will listen on port 9000. This does not publish the port.

7. This command runs Apache in the foreground to keep the container running.

# Use the official PHP image as a parent image
FROM php:8.0-apache    

# Set working directory
WORKDIR /var/www

# Install PHP extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd

# Copy application files
COPY . /var/www

# Enable Apache modules
RUN a2enmod rewrite

# Expose port 9000 
EXPOSE 9000

# Start php-fpm server
CMD ["apache2-foreground"]

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