PHP 8.5 + Laravel Docker: The Future Is Containerized

PHP 8.5 has doubled down on cloud‑native workflows. With containerization now a first‑class citizen, developers can ship consistent environments across dev, staging, and production. Meanwhile, Laravel’s ecosystem has embraced Docker as the default — from local onboarding to production deployments.

🐳 PHP 8.5 Containerization Features

🔹 Why It Matters

Consistency: Same PHP runtime everywhere.
Portability: Works across Windows, macOS, Linux.
Performance: PHP 8.5 optimizations (pipe operator, array helpers, memory directives) run seamlessly inside containers.

🔹 Example: Minimal PHP 8.5 Dockerfile

# Dockerfile for PHP 8.5 FPM
FROM php:8.5-fpm

# Install common extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql intl

# Copy app code
COPY . /var/www/html

# Expose PHP-FPM port
EXPOSE 9000

CMD ["php-fpm"]

Usage:

docker build -t my-php-app .
docker run -p 9000:9000 my-php-app

This ensures your PHP 8.5 app runs identically across machines.

⚡ Laravel Docker Trends in 2025

🔹 Common Practices

Production‑ready stacks: PHP‑FPM, Nginx, MySQL/Postgres, Redis, queues, schedulers.
Onboarding: docker-compose up spins up the full Laravel environment instantly.
Cloud‑native: Images integrate with Kubernetes, AWS ECS, DigitalOcean Apps.

🔹 Example: Laravel `docker-compose.yml`

version: '3.8'
services:
  app:
    build: .
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: mysql:8.0
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret
  nginx:
    image: nginx:latest
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    ports:
      - "8080:80"

How it works:

app runs Laravel with PHP 8.5 FPM.
db provides MySQL.
nginx serves requests on port 8080.

🔹 Example: Laravel Queue Worker in Docker

queue:
  build: .
  command: php artisan queue:work
  depends_on:
    - app
    - redis
redis:
  image: redis:latest

This ensures background jobs run in their own container, scaling independently.

📈 Trends to Watch

Microservices: Splitting Laravel apps into smaller containerized services.
CI/CD pipelines: Auto‑build and push Docker images on every commit.
Security: PHP 8.5 containers enforce stricter memory limits and deprecations.
Community adoption: Starter kits for Laravel + Docker are mainstream.

🎯 Final Thoughts

PHP 8.5’s containerization and Laravel’s Docker adoption converge on one theme: reproducibility and scalability. Whether you’re solo or running a SaaS team, containerized PHP + Laravel stacks are now the default path forward.