Laravel Sail
- Introduction
- Installation & Setup
- Starting & Stopping Sail
- Executing Commands
- Interacting With Databases
- File Storage
- Running Tests
- Previewing Emails
- Container CLI
- PHP Versions
- Sharing Your Site
- Debugging With Xdebug
- Customization
Introduction
Laravel Sail is a light-weight command-line interface for interacting with Laravel's default Docker development environment. Sail provides a great starting point for building a Laravel application using PHP, MySQL, and Redis without requiring prior Docker experience.
At its heart, Sail is the docker-compose.yml
file and the sail
script that is stored at the root of your project. The sail
script provides a CLI with convenient methods for interacting with the Docker containers defined by the docker-compose.yml
file.
Laravel Sail is supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows (via WSL2).
Installation & Setup
Laravel Sail is automatically installed with all new Laravel applications so you may start using it immediately. To learn how to create a new Laravel application, please consult Laravel's installation documentation for your operating system. During installation, you will be asked to choose which Sail supported services your application will be interacting with.
Installing Sail Into Existing Applications
If you are interested in using Sail with an existing Laravel application, you may simply install Sail using the Composer package manager. Of course, these steps assume that your existing local development environment allows you to install Composer dependencies:
composer require laravel/sail --dev
After Sail has been installed, you may run the sail:install
Artisan command. This command will publish Sail's docker-compose.yml
file to the root of your application:
php artisan sail:install
Finally, you may start Sail. To continue learning how to use Sail, please continue reading the remainder of this documentation:
./vendor/bin/sail up
Using Devcontainers
If you would like to develop within a Devcontainer, you may provide the --devcontainer
option to the sail:install
command. The --devcontainer
option will instruct the sail:install
command to publish a default .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
file to the root of your application:
php artisan sail:install --devcontainer
Configuring A Bash Alias
By default, Sail commands are invoked using the vendor/bin/sail
script that is included with all new Laravel applications:
./vendor/bin/sail up
However, instead of repeatedly typing vendor/bin/sail
to execute Sail commands, you may wish to configure a Bash alias that allows you to execute Sail's commands more easily:
alias sail='[ -f sail ] && bash sail || bash vendor/bin/sail'
Once the Bash alias has been configured, you may execute Sail commands by simply typing sail
. The remainder of this documentation's examples will assume that you have configured this alias:
sail up
Starting & Stopping Sail
Laravel Sail's docker-compose.yml
file defines a variety of Docker containers that work together to help you build Laravel applications. Each of these containers is an entry within the services
configuration of your docker-compose.yml
file. The laravel.test
container is the primary application container that will be serving your application.
Before starting Sail, you should ensure that no other web servers or databases are running on your local computer. To start all of the Docker containers defined in your application's docker-compose.yml
file, you should execute the up
command:
sail up
To start all of the Docker containers in the background, you may start Sail in "detached" mode:
sail up -d
Once the application's containers have been started, you may access the project in your web browser at: http://localhost.
To stop all of the containers, you may simply press Control + C to stop the container's execution. Or, if the containers are running in the background, you may use the stop
command:
sail stop
Executing Commands
When using Laravel Sail, your application is executing within a Docker container and is isolated from your local computer. However, Sail provides a convenient way to run various commands against your application such as arbitrary PHP commands, Artisan commands, Composer commands, and Node / NPM commands.
When reading the Laravel documentation, you will often see references to Composer, Artisan, and Node / NPM commands that do not reference Sail. Those examples assume that these tools are installed on your local computer. If you are using Sail for your local Laravel development environment, you should execute those commands using Sail:
# Running Artisan commands locally...
php artisan queue:work
# Running Artisan commands within Laravel Sail...
sail artisan queue:work
Executing PHP Commands
PHP commands may be executed using the php
command. Of course, these commands will execute using the PHP version that is configured for your application. To learn more about the PHP versions available to Laravel Sail, consult the PHP version documentation:
sail php --version
sail php script.php
Executing Composer Commands
Composer commands may be executed using the composer
command. Laravel Sail's application container includes a Composer 2.x installation:
sail composer require laravel/sanctum
Installing Composer Dependencies For Existing Applications
If you are developing an application with a team, you may not be the one that initially creates the Laravel application. Therefore, none of the application's Composer dependencies, including Sail, will be installed after you clone the application's repository to your local computer.
You may install the application's dependencies by navigating to the application's directory and executing the following command. This command uses a small Docker container containing PHP and Composer to install the application's dependencies:
docker run --rm \
-u "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
-v $(pwd):/var/www/html \
-w /var/www/html \
laravelsail/php80-composer:latest \
composer install --ignore-platform-reqs
Executing Artisan Commands
Laravel Artisan commands may be executed using the artisan
command:
sail artisan queue:work
Executing Node / NPM Commands
Node commands may be executed using the node
command while NPM commands may be executed using the npm
command:
sail node --version
sail npm run prod
Interacting With Databases
MySQL
As you may have noticed, your application's docker-compose.yml
file contains an entry for a MySQL container. This container uses a Docker volume so that the data stored in your database is persisted even when stopping and restarting your containers. In addition, when the MySQL container is starting, it will ensure a database exists whose name matches the value of your DB_DATABASE
environment variable.
Once you have started your containers, you may connect to the MySQL instance within your application by setting your DB_HOST
environment variable within your application's .env
file to mysql
.
To connect to your application's MySQL database from your local machine, you may use a graphical database management application such as TablePlus. By default, the MySQL database is accessible at localhost
port 3306.
Redis
Your application's docker-compose.yml
file also contains an entry for a Redis container. This container uses a Docker volume so that the data stored in your Redis data is persisted even when stopping and restarting your containers. Once you have started your containers, you may connect to the Redis instance within your application by setting your REDIS_HOST
environment variable within your application's .env
file to redis
.
To connect to your application's Redis database from your local machine, you may use a graphical database management application such as TablePlus. By default, the Redis database is accessible at localhost
port 6379.
MeiliSearch
If you chose to install the MeiliSearch service when installing Sail, your application's docker-compose.yml
file will contain an entry for this powerful search-engine that is compatible with Laravel Scout. Once you have started your containers, you may connect to the MeiliSearch instance within your application by setting your MEILISEARCH_HOST
environment variable to http://meilisearch:7700
.
From your local machine, you may access MeiliSearch's web based administration panel by navigating to http://localhost:7700
in your web browser.
File Storage
If you plan to use Amazon S3 to store files while running your application in its production environment, you may wish to install the MinIO service when installing Sail. MinIO provides an S3 compatible API that you may use to develop locally using Laravel's s3
file storage driver without creating "test" storage buckets in your production S3 environment. If you choose to install MinIO while installing Sail, a MinIO configuration section will be added to your application's docker-compose.yml
file.
By default, your application's filesystems
configuration file already contains a disk configuration for the s3
disk. In addition to using this disk to interact with Amazon S3, you may use it to interact with any S3 compatible file storage service such as MinIO by simply modifying the associated environment variables that control its configuration. For example, when using MinIO, your filesystem environment variable configuration should be defined as follows:
FILESYSTEM_DRIVER=s3
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=sail
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=password
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_BUCKET=local
AWS_ENDPOINT=http://minio:9000
AWS_USE_PATH_STYLE_ENDPOINT=true
Running Tests
Laravel provides amazing testing support out of the box, and you may use Sail's test
command to run your applications feature and unit tests. Any CLI options that are accepted by PHPUnit may also be passed to the test
command:
sail test
sail test --group orders
The Sail test
command is equivalent to running the test
Artisan command:
sail artisan test
Laravel Dusk
Laravel Dusk provides an expressive, easy-to-use browser automation and testing API. Thanks to Sail, you may run these tests without ever installing Selenium or other tools on your local computer. To get started, uncomment the Selenium service in your application's docker-compose.yml
file:
selenium:
image: 'selenium/standalone-chrome'
volumes:
- '/dev/shm:/dev/shm'
networks:
- sail
Next, ensure that the laravel.test
service in your application's docker-compose.yml
file has a depends_on
entry for selenium
:
depends_on:
- mysql
- redis
- selenium
Finally, you may run your Dusk test suite by starting Sail and running the dusk
command:
sail dusk
Selenium On Apple Silicon
If your local machine contains an Apple Silicon chip, your selenium
service must use the seleniarm/standalone-chromium
image:
selenium:
image: 'seleniarm/standalone-chromium'
volumes:
- '/dev/shm:/dev/shm'
networks:
- sail
Previewing Emails
Laravel Sail's default docker-compose.yml
file contains a service entry for MailHog. MailHog intercepts emails sent by your application during local development and provides a convenient web interface so that you can preview your email messages in your browser. When using Sail, MailHog's default host is mailhog
and is available via port 1025:
MAIL_HOST=mailhog
MAIL_PORT=1025
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
When Sail is running, you may access the MailHog web interface at: http://localhost:8025
Container CLI
Sometimes you may wish to start a Bash session within your application's container. You may use the shell
command to connect to your application's container, allowing you to inspect its files and installed services as well execute arbitrary shell commands within the container:
sail shell
sail root-shell
To start a new Laravel Tinker session, you may execute the tinker
command:
sail tinker
PHP Versions
Sail currently supports serving your application via PHP 8.1, PHP 8.0, or PHP 7.4. The default PHP version used by Sail is currently PHP 8.1. To change the PHP version that is used to serve your application, you should update the build
definition of the laravel.test
container in your application's docker-compose.yml
file:
# PHP 8.1
context: ./vendor/laravel/sail/runtimes/8.1
# PHP 8.0
context: ./vendor/laravel/sail/runtimes/8.0
# PHP 7.4
context: ./vendor/laravel/sail/runtimes/7.4
In addition, you may wish to update your image
name to reflect the version of PHP being used by your application. This option is also defined in your application's docker-compose.yml
file:
image: sail-8.1/app
After updating your application's docker-compose.yml
file, you should rebuild your container images:
sail build --no-cache
sail up
Sharing Your Site
Sometimes you may need to share your site publicly in order to preview your site for a colleague or to test webhook integrations with your application. To share your site, you may use the share
command. After executing this command, you will be issued a random laravel-sail.site
URL that you may use to access your application:
sail share
When sharing your site via the share
command, you should configure your application's trusted proxies within the TrustProxies
middleware. Otherwise, URL generation helpers such as url
and route
will be unable to determine the correct HTTP host that should be used during URL generation:
/**
* The trusted proxies for this application.
*
* @var array|string|null
*/
protected $proxies = '*';
If you would like to choose the subdomain for your shared site, you may provide the subdomain
option when executing the share
command:
sail share --subdomain=my-sail-site
{tip} The
share
command is powered by Expose, an open source tunneling service by BeyondCode.
Debugging With Xdebug
Laravel Sail's Docker configuration includes support for Xdebug, a popular and powerful debugger for PHP. In order to enable Xdebug, you will need to add a few variables to your application's .env
file to configure Xdebug. To enable Xdebug you must set the appropriate mode(s) before starting Sail:
SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE=develop,debug
Linux Host IP Configuration
Internally, the XDEBUG_CONFIG
environment variable is defined as client_host=host.docker.internal
so that Xdebug will be properly configured for Mac and Windows (WSL2). If your local machine is running Linux, you will need to manually define this environment variable.
First, you should determine the correct host IP address to add to the environment variable by running the following command. Typically, the <container-name>
should be the name of the container that serves your application and often ends with _laravel.test_1
:
docker inspect -f {{range.NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.Gateway}}{{end}} <container-name>
Once you have obtained the correct host IP address, you should define the SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG
variable within your application's .env
file:
SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG="client_host=<host-ip-address>"
Xdebug CLI Usage
A sail debug
command may be used to start a debugging session when running an Artisan command:
# Run an Artisan command without Xdebug...
sail artisan migrate
# Run an Artisan command with Xdebug...
sail debug migrate
Xdebug Browser Usage
To debug your application while interacting with the application via a web browser, follow the instructions provided by Xdebug for initiating an Xdebug session from the web browser.
If you're using PhpStorm, please review JetBrain's documentation regarding zero-configuration debugging.
Customization
Since Sail is just Docker, you are free to customize nearly everything about it. To publish Sail's own Dockerfiles, you may execute the sail:publish
command:
sail artisan sail:publish
After running this command, the Dockerfiles and other configuration files used by Laravel Sail will be placed within a docker
directory in your application's root directory. After customizing your Sail installation, you may wish to change the image name for the laravel.test
service in your application's docker-compose.yml
file. After doing so, rebuild your application's containers using the build
command. Assigning a unique name to the laravel.test
service image is particularly important if you are using Sail to develop multiple Laravel applications on a single machine:
sail build --no-cache