---
title: "How To Set Up Laravel, Nginx, and MySQL with Docker Compose"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-set-up-laravel-nginx-and-mysql-with-docker-compose-neziqjyda
source_url: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-laravel-nginx-and-mysql-with-docker-compose
type: article
source: "DigitalOcean Community"
published: 2026-02-23T19:11:32.437Z
updated: 2026-02-23T19:12:06.626Z
tags: ["docker", "php", "laravel", "mysql", "nginx"]
reading_time: 28
upvotes: 25
comments: 2
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How To Set Up Laravel, Nginx, and MySQL with Docker Compose

**[DigitalOcean Community](https://daily.dev/sources/do_community)** · 28 min read · 25 upvotes · 2 comments

## Summary

A comprehensive step-by-step guide to containerizing a Laravel application using Docker Compose with Nginx and MySQL. Covers creating a docker-compose.yml with three services (PHP-FPM app, Nginx webserver, MySQL db), writing a custom Dockerfile based on php:8.3-fpm, configuring PHP settings via local.ini, setting up Nginx with FastCGI proxying to PHP-FPM, persisting MySQL data with named volumes, configuring Laravel's .env for container-based DB connections, running Artisan migrations inside containers, and troubleshooting common issues like 502 errors, permission problems, and database connection failures.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-laravel-nginx-and-mysql-with-docker-compose>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@403gtfo** · 0 upvotes

> Save yourself time and drama, just use Laravel sail. It is their docker version. I never build without it these days. [https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/sail](https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/sail)
>
> Don't get me wrong though, it is nice to understand what sail is doing (original long manual process in linked article).

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Laravel Docker \#10: Running PHP-FPM and Nginx with Supervisor in a Single Docker Container](https://daily.dev/posts/laravel-docker-10-running-php-fpm-and-nginx-with-supervisor-in-a-single-docker-container-jy0tvrl52) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#docker](https://daily.dev/tags/docker), [#php](https://daily.dev/tags/php), [#laravel](https://daily.dev/tags/laravel), [#mysql](https://daily.dev/tags/mysql), [#nginx](https://daily.dev/tags/nginx)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-set-up-laravel-nginx-and-mysql-with-docker-compose-neziqjyda)