Chainguard Container for php

Minimalist Wolfi-based PHP images for building and running PHP applications. Includes both dev and fpm variants.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/php:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard PHP Image is comparable to the official PHP Image from Docker Hub. However, the Chainguard image does not run as the root user and contains only the minimum set of tools and dependencies needed to function. This means it doesn't include things like a shell or a package manager.

Because PHP applications typically require the installation of third-party dependencies with Composer, using a fully distroless image for building your application would not work. In cases like this, it's recommended that you implement a multi-stage Docker build that uses one of the PHP image's -dev variants to set up the application.

Note that chainguard also offers a php:latest-fpm image. This is the distroless php-fpm image variant, designed to be used together with our Nginx image.

Getting Started

To better understand how you can work with the Chainguard PHP image, we encourage you to check out our guide on getting started with PHP. This resource demonstrates how you can use Chainguard's PHP Image to set up a distroless container image as a runtime to execute a command-line PHP application.

When creating a Dockerfile to extend Chainguard's PHP images, the recommended approach is to set up a multi-stage build so that you're able to install your Composer dependencies on a separate environment and then copy the files over to a smaller production image.

Command-line Scripts and Applications

The following example demonstrates how to set up a multi-stage Dockerfile build in the context of command-line PHP applications:

FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest-dev AS builder
COPY . /app
RUN cd /app && \
    composer install --no-progress --no-dev --prefer-dist

FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest
COPY --from=builder /app /app

ENTRYPOINT [ "php", "/app/command" ]

Web Applications and APIs

For web applications, you should follow the same principle, but using the php-fpm variant for the final image. You'll also need a custom nginx.conf file to set up your Nginx service with PHP-FPM.

A good way to test your setup locally is by using Docker Compose. The following docker-compose.yaml file demonstrates how to create a web server environment using the Nginx Chainguard Image:

version: "3.7"
services:
  app:
    image: cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest-fpm
    restart: unless-stopped
    working_dir: /app
    volumes:
      - ./:/app
    networks:
      - wolfi

  nginx:
    image: cgr.dev/chainguard/nginx
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8000:80
    volumes:
      - ./:/app
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    networks:
      - wolfi

networks:
  wolfi:
    driver: bridge

Notice that the Nginx service has a volume share to set up a custom config file. The following nginx.conf file sets up Nginx to serve pages from an /app/public folder and redirects requests to .php files to the app service on port 9000.

events {
  worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    server {
        listen 80;
        index index.php index.html;
        root /app/public;
        location ~ \.php$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            fastcgi_pass app:9000;
            fastcgi_index index.php;
            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
        }
        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
            gzip_static on;
        }
    }
}

Configuration

To install application dependencies from your host machine, you can use the latest-dev variant with a shared volume:

docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/work --entrypoint composer --user root \
    cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest-dev \
    install --working-dir=/work

To obtain information about modules available for the Chainguard PHP image, you can run the following command:

docker run --rm --entrypoint php cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest -m

To obtain detailed information about the environment, you can run a php --info command on any of the image tags and use grep to look for a specific module or extension.

For instance, to check for curl settings, you can run:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/chainguard/php:latest --info | grep curl

Documentation and Resources

• Getting Started with the PHP Chainguard Image
• Migrating to PHP Chainguard Images
• Vulnerability Comparison: php

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.