Automate PHP application deployment process with PHP deployment tool. We will learn how to setup Deployer and use it to deploy PHP application.

PHP Deployment Tool

Its a very critical job to deploy application on the server after development. New features and bug fixes are often released by teams. So, it is preferable for teams to eliminate manual work and automate the software deployment process. It would allow software teams to concentrate on more important tasks. There are several open source deployment tool out there but we will concentrate on PHP Deployer in this tutorial. We will cover the following section in this post.

What is Deployer

Deployer is a free and open-source PHP deployment tool. It allows software teams for automating deployment workflows for PHP-based applications. It’s very simple to install and easy to use. Anyone from beginner to expert level experience can quickly use it for deploying PHP applications. Deployer comes with out-of-the-box recipes/scripts for popular PHP frameworks, CMS, and shopping cart software. Further, you can do Laravel deployment with this open source deployment tool. The developer can use built-in recipes for their projects and use them for deployment. Further, you can easily create install/deploy script with the PHP Deployer wizard. Moreover, this free deployment tool offers excellent features such as zero-downtime deployments, rollback to the previous version, SSH, parallel execution, and many more.

Installing Deployer

  • Deployer depends on PHP. You should ensure that PHP is running on your server. However, you can use below command to install PHP on Ubuntu.
sudo apt-get install php
  • Run below commands one by one to install Deployer.
curl -LO https://Deployer.org/Deployer.phar
sudo mv Deployer.phar /usr/local/bin/dep
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/dep

Deploy PHP Application

Follow step-by-step guidelines to deploy PHP application with Deployer.

  • Create a directory for deployer and navigate to the newly-created directory.
sudo mkdir deployer
cd deployer
  • Run the below command to generate an installation script
dep init
  • You will be prompted with the below screen. This is a Deployer wizard to create basic install script.
  • First, you need to select project type by entering a number. You can enter 0, if you are not sure about project type or just getting familiar with Deployer.
  • Secondly, you need to provide a Git repository path. Its an optional step, you can skip it and add a path later.
  • In the last step, you may share information with the Deployer community by selecting Yes or enter No to skip it.
<?php
namespace Deployer;

require 'recipe/common.php';

// Project name
set('application', 'my_project');

// Project repository
set('repository', '');

// [Optional] Allocate tty for git clone. Default value is false.
set('git_tty', true); 

// Shared files/dirs between deploys 
set('shared_files', []);
set('shared_dirs', []);

// Writable dirs by web server 
set('writable_dirs', []);
set('allow_anonymous_stats', false);

// Hosts

host('project.com')
    ->set('deploy_path', '~/{{application}}');    
    

// Tasks

desc('Deploy your project');
task('deploy', [
    'deploy:info',
    'deploy:prepare',
    'deploy:lock',
    'deploy:release',
    'deploy:update_code',
    'deploy:shared',
    'deploy:writable',
    'deploy:vendors',
    'deploy:clear_paths',
    'deploy:symlink',
    'deploy:unlock',
    'cleanup',
    'success'
]);

// [Optional] If deploy fails automatically unlock.
after('deploy:failed', 'deploy:unlock');

You have to change the following variables for deploying your PHP application.

  • set(‘application’, ‘my_project’); – Set application name.
  • set(‘repository’, ”); – Set Git repository path like ‘git@github.com:masood/first-app-with-deployer.git’. You must set the deploy key to your GitHub repository. You may search how to create an SSH key at server, if you are not familiar with it.
  • host(‘project.com’)
    ->set(‘deploy_path’, ‘~/{{application}}’);     – Set project name and define path where you want to store files for your application. It would look like /var/www/html/deployer.

Finally, run the below command to deploy your PHP application.

dep deployer

If you find any issues with the new release and want to rollback changes. You can do it by simply running the below command.

dep rollback

Conclusion

We have discussed about Deployer and how to install it in this tutorial. Further, we have created complete guideline for deploying PHP based application from GitHub repository. Hopefully, this blog post will help you to start deploy PHP application with Deployer. Moreover, we will write more about this PHP deployment tool in coming tutorials.

Finally, containerize.com is in a consistent process of writing blog posts on further latest open source products. Therefore, stay in touch with this Deployment Tools category for the latest updates.

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