Setup CakePHP

Setup CakePHP

This example installs a modern CakePHP 5 application with Composer from inside the Devilbox PHP container. The project is served through the standard Devilbox virtual host layout over HTTP and HTTPS.

After completing the steps below, my-cake.lvh.me will serve the CakePHP application from data/www/my-cake/htdocs.

Overview

Project name	Container path	Database	TLD_SUFFIX	Project URL
my-cake	/shared/httpd/my-cake	my_cake	lvh.me	http://my-cake.lvh.me / https://my-cake.lvh.me

Inside the PHP container, web projects live in /shared/httpd/. On the host, the same files are stored below ./data/www/ in the Devilbox checkout unless you changed HTTPD_DOCROOT_DIR or the web data directory.

Tip

Use ./dvl.sh shell for an interactive container session, or ./dvl.sh exec "command" for a single command from the host.

Prerequisites

• Devilbox installed and configured from env-example.
• Docker Compose v2 available through Docker.
• The default PHP stack available. env-example includes current PHP 8 containers; the 8.3 container is a safe default for CakePHP version 5.
• mysql running for the database.

Start the required services from the Devilbox directory:

./dvl.sh up php httpd mysql bind

Walk through

It will be ready in eight steps:

1. Enter the PHP container.
2. Create a new virtual host directory.
3. Install CakePHP 5 with Composer.
4. Link the CakePHP webroot to htdocs.
5. Add a MySQL database.
6. Configure the database connection.
7. Verify DNS.
8. Open the project in a browser.

1. Enter the PHP container

./dvl.sh shell php83

2. Create the vhost directory

mkdir -p /shared/httpd/my-cake
cd /shared/httpd/my-cake

The directory name becomes the virtual host name: my-cake.lvh.me when TLD_SUFFIX=lvh.me.

3. Install CakePHP 5

composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app:^5.0 cakephp

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
└── cakephp

4. Link the webroot

The web server serves <vhost>/htdocs, while CakePHP keeps its entrypoint in webroot/.

ln -s cakephp/webroot htdocs

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
├── cakephp
└── htdocs -> cakephp/webroot

5. Add the MySQL database

mysql -u root -h 127.0.0.1 -p -e 'CREATE DATABASE my_cake CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;'

6. Configure the database connection

Edit cakephp/config/app_local.php and set the default datasource:

<?php
return [
    'Datasources' => [
        'default' => [
            'host' => '127.0.0.1',
            'username' => 'root',
            'password' => 'secret',
            'database' => 'my_cake',
            'encoding' => 'utf8mb4',
            'timezone' => 'UTC',
        ],
    ],
];

Use your actual MySQL root password from .env if it differs.

7. Verify DNS

With the default lvh.me suffix, no hosts-file entry is required because *.lvh.me resolves to 127.0.0.1. If you use a custom suffix, add an /etc/hosts entry such as:

127.0.0.1 my-cake.example

8. Open your browser

Visit http://my-cake.lvh.me or https://my-cake.lvh.me.

Next steps

• Use Adminer or phpMyAdmin from the Devilbox intranet to inspect my_cake.
• Enable valid local HTTPS if your browser warns about the certificate.
• Add cache, queue, or search services only when the application needs them.