Emulating an Apache + PHP server locally

Docker Compose can spin up a local Apache + PHP server without installing anything on the host. This is useful for developing and testing PHP pages before deploying them.

docker-compose.yml

Place this file in the directory you want to serve:

services:
  web:
    image: php:8.3-apache
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html

The volume mount .:/var/www/html maps the current directory to the Apache document root, so every file in that directory is immediately available without rebuilding.

To serve a subdirectory (e.g. web_portal/) instead, change the volume to:

      - ./web_portal:/var/www/html

Starting and stopping

From the directory containing docker-compose.yml:

docker compose up -d

Stop and remove the container:

docker compose down

Accessing the server

Open a browser and navigate to:

http://localhost:8080/<filename>.php

For example, if docker-compose.yml mounts ./web_portal and that directory contains type1.php:

http://localhost:8080/type1.php

Useful commands

Tail the Apache error log while a page is loading:

docker compose logs -f

Open a shell inside the container:

docker compose exec web bash