I have a couple of WordPress sites that I wanted to create local development environments in docker for, here are some tips on how to get it to work.

I use the official MySQL and WordPress docker images. The directory structure is as follows:

	.
	├── env
	│ ├── config
	│ │ ├── 01production_dump.sql
	│ │ ├── 02update-development-site.sh.sh
	│ │ └── php.ini-development
	│ └── dev-env.sh
	└── src
	└── wp-content
	├── plugins
	├── themes
	└── uploads

view raw tree-structure.txt hosted with by GitHub

dev-env.sh:

	#!/usr/bin/env bash
	DATABASE_CONTAINER="dev-db"
	WEBSERVER_CONTAINER="dev-web"
	MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD="my-secret"
	MYSQL_USER="dev"
	MYSQL_PASSWORD="dev"
	MYSQL_DATABASE="wordpress"
	docker pull wordpress:latest
	docker pull mysql:${MYSQL_VERSION}
	docker inspect d${DATABASE_CONTAINER} &> /dev/null || docker create \
	-v /var/lib/mysql \
	--name d${DATABASE_CONTAINER} \
	mysql:${MYSQL_VERSION} \
	/bin/true
	docker inspect ${DATABASE_CONTAINER} &> /dev/null && docker start ${DATABASE_CONTAINER}
	docker inspect ${DATABASE_CONTAINER} &> /dev/null || docker run --name ${DATABASE_CONTAINER} \
	-e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD} \
	-e MYSQL_USER=${MYSQL_USER} \
	-e MYSQL_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD} \
	-e MYSQL_DATABASE=${MYSQL_DATABASE} \
	--volumes-from d${DATABASE_CONTAINER} \
	-v $(pwd)/config/:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ \
	-d mysql:${MYSQL_VERSION}
	test $? -ne 0 && { echo "Failed to start database container."; exit 1; }
	docker inspect ${WEBSERVER_CONTAINER} &> /dev/null && docker start ${WEBSERVER_CONTAINER}
	docker inspect ${WEBSERVER_CONTAINER} &> /dev/null || docker run --name ${WEBSERVER_CONTAINER} \
	--link ${DATABASE_CONTAINER}:mysql \
	-v $(pwd)/config/php.ini-development:/usr/local/etc/php/php.ini \
	-v $(realpath $(pwd)/../src)/wp-content/uploads:/var/www/html/wp-content/uploads \
	-v $(realpath $(pwd)/../src)/wp-content/themes/my-custom-theme/:/var/www/html/wp-content/themes/my-custom-theme/ \
	-v $(realpath $(pwd)/../src)/wp-content/plugins/:/var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/ \
	-e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=${MYSQL_USER} \
	-e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD} \
	-e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=${MYSQL_DATABASE} \
	-e WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX="wp_" \
	-p 80:80 -d wordpress:4
	test $? -ne 0 && { echo "Failed to start webserver container."; exit 1; }

view raw dev-env.sh hosted with by GitHub

update-development-site.sh:

	#!/usr/bin/env bash
	cmd="mysql -u ${MYSQL_USER} --password=${MYSQL_PASSWORD} ${MYSQL_DATABASE} -e"
	table_prefix=$($cmd "show tables;" -N -B 2>/dev/null | tail -1 | awk -F\_ '{print $1}')
	$cmd "update ${table_prefix}_options set option_value = 'http://localhost' where option_name in ('siteurl', 'home');" 2>/dev/null

view raw 02update-development-db.sh hosted with by GitHub

production_dump.sql is a MySQL dump of the production database, add a “use wordpress-site;” statement in the beginning so that the backup is imported into the correct database.