PHP with Apache application runtime

Overview

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

The HTTP server is Apache 2, and the PHP code is executed by PHP-FPM.

Create your PHP application

To create a new PHP application, use the Clever Cloud Console or Clever Tools:

clever create --type php

• Learn more about Clever Tools
• Learn more about Clever Cloud application deployment

Configure your PHP application

Mandatory needs

PHP runtime requires a working web application. The HTTP server is Apache 2 with PHP-FPM. If you need to serve files from a specific directory, set the CC_WEBROOT environment variable (e.g. /public).

clever env set CC_WEBROOT /public

• Learn more about environment variables on Clever Cloud

Build phase

Composer build is supported out of the box. If a composer.json file is present at the root of your repository, dependencies are installed automatically during the build phase.

• Learn more about Composer on Clever Cloud
• Learn more about Deployment hooks

PHP version

Set the CC_PHP_VERSION environment variable to one of the following versions.

The end-of-life (EOL) versions are marked as such.

All new PHP applications are created with a default CC_PHP_VERSION. You can change it whenever you want then redeploy your application to use the version you want. Only values based on the first two digits (X or X.Y, not X.Y.Z) are supported.

Custom PHP configuration

Most PHP settings can be changed using a .user.ini file.

If you want the settings to be applied to the whole application, you should put this file in your webroot. If you did not change it, then your webroot is the root of the repository.

If you put the .user.ini file in a subdirectory, settings will be applied recursively starting from this subdirectory.

You can review the available directives; all the PHP_INI_USER, PHP_INI_PERDIR, and PHP_INI_ALL directives can be set from within .user.ini.

• Learn more about .user.ini

Same configuration between PHP-CLI and PHP-FPM

.user.ini files are not loaded by the PHP CLI by default.

However, some PHP applications may want to check for the PHP-FPM configuration pre-requisites, post_max_size or upload_max_filesize values for example.

To load the PHP-FPM .user.ini file during a PHP-CLI process, in a hook, use the PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR environment variable to load the additional file.

Assuming the script runs at the root-folder of the application:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

export PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR=":."
php myscript.php

This appends the current directory while still loading the default configuration.

A specific .ini file can be loaded with:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

export PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR=":.php-configuration/"
php myscript.php

This loads every .ini files in the php-configuration/ directory.

Timezone configuration

All instances on Clever Cloud run on the UTC timezone. We recommend to handle all your dates in UTC internally, and only handle timezones when reading or displaying dates.

Additionally, you can set PHP’s time zone setting with .user.ini. For instance, to use the french time zone, edit .user.ini to add this line:

date.timezone=Europe/Paris

Memory Limit

When php-fpm spawns a worker it allocates a smaller part of the application’s memory to the worker, here is the allocated memory for each flavor:

To change this limit you can define MEMORY_LIMIT environment variable.

If you define a limit exceeding the application memory it will use the default one.

Frameworks and CMS

The following is the list of tested CMS by our team.

It’s quite not exhaustive, so it does not mean that other CMS can’t work on the Clever Cloud platform.

Others PHP frameworks tested on Clever Cloud:

• Prestashop
• Dokuwiki
• Joomla
• SugarCRM
• Drupal
• Magento
• Status.net
• Symfony
• Thelia
• Laravel
• Sylius

Configure Monolog

A lot of frameworks (including Symfony) use Monolog to handle logging. The default configuration of Monolog doesn’t allow to log errors into the console.

Here is a basic configuration of Monolog to send your application’s logs into our logging system and access them into the Console:

monolog:
  handlers:
    clever_logs:
      type: error_log
      level: warning

You can change the level to whatever level you desire. For Symfony, the configuration file is app/config/config_prod.yml.

Laravel doesn’t need Monolog to retrieve logs via Clever console or Clever CLI. Here, ensure that you have the following line in config/app.php:

return [
    // …
    'log' => env('APP_LOG'),
    // …
];

Then, set APP_LOG=syslog as Clever application environment variable.

Monitor your application with New Relic

You can use New Relic to monitor your application on Clever Cloud.

Please refer to our New Relic documentation to configure it for your application.

Monitor your application with Blackfire

You can use Blackfire to monitor your application on Clever Cloud.

Please refer to our Blackfire documentation to configure it for your application.

ProxySQL

ProxySQL is a tool that acts like a proxy between your application and your MySQL add-on. Instead of connecting to your MySQL add-on, you can connect to the local ProxySQL and it will forward all your requests to your MySQL add-on.

This allows you to let ProxySQL take care of some interesting features like connection pooling or leader / follower setup.

You can learn more about ProxySQL on the dedicated documentation page

Enable health check during deployment

The healthcheck allows you to limit downtimes. Indeed, you can provide Clever Cloud with paths to check. If these paths return something other than 200, the deployment will fail.

Add one (or several) environment variable as such:

CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH=/my/awesome/path

Or

CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH_0=/my/awesome/path
CC_HEALTH_CHECK_PATH_1=/my/other/path

The deployment process checks all paths. All of them must reply with a 200 OK response code.

By default, when no environment variable (for ex: APP_HOME) is defined, the monitoring checks your repository root path /.

Example

Using the path listed above, below are the expected logs:

Response from GET /my/awesome/path is 200
Response from GET /my/other/path is 500
Health check failed:
- GET /my/other/path returned 500.
If the deployment fails after this message, please update your configuration and redeploy.

In this example, the first path is OK, but the second one failed. This gives you a hint on what failed in your application.

Best practice for healthcheck endpoints

To make the most of a healthcheck endpoint, have it check your critical dependencies. For example:

• execute SELECT 1 + 1; on your database
• retrieve a specific Cellar file
• ping a specific IP through a VPN

Request Flow: Varnish, Redirection.io, custom proxy

Request Flow automatically chains reverse proxies between port 8080 (public) and your application, managing port allocation with no manual configuration. Supported services are activated by their presence in your project:

• Otoroshi Challenge: set OTOROSHI_CHALLENGE_SECRET
• Varnish: add a clevercloud/varnish.vcl file or set CC_VARNISH_FILE
• Redirection.io: set CC_REDIRECTIONIO_PROJECT_KEY

All three can be active simultaneously. To control the order, set CC_REQUEST_FLOW (e.g. redirectionio,varnish). To add a custom middleware, include custom in the chain and define CC_REQUEST_FLOW_CUSTOM with @@LISTEN_PORT@@ and @@FORWARD_PORT@@ placeholders. To block public access, set CC_REQUEST_FLOW=block.

When at least one middleware is active, your application must listen on port 9000 instead of 8080.

• Learn more about Request Flow
• Learn more about Varnish on Clever Cloud
• Learn more about Redirection.io