Directory overview

[!IMPORTANT] The directory overview only provides you some theoretical, but useful insights about how it all works together. You should at least read it once to be able to debug any problems you might encounter.

If you have read it already, jump directly to getting-started-create-your-first-project

Data directory

By default all your projects must be created in the ./data/www/ directory which is inside in your Devilbox git directory. This can be changed as well, but is outside the scope of this getting started tutorial.

You can verifiy that the path is actually ./data/www/ by checking your .env file:

host> grep HTTPD_DATADIR .env

HOST_PATH_HTTPD_DATADIR=./data/www

Project directory

The project directory is a directory directly within the data directory.

This represents one project.

By creating this directory, the web server will create a new virtual host for you. This happens fully automated and there is nothing else required to do except just to create a directory.

The name of this directory will also be used to build up the final project url together with the domain suffix: http://<project directory>.<domain suffix>

Create as many project directories as you require.

Docroot directory

The docroot directory is a directory within each project directory from which the webserver will serve the files.

By default this directory must be named htdocs. This can be changed as well, but is outside the scope of this getting started tutorial.

You can verifiy that the docroot directory is actually htdocs by checking your .env file:

host> grep DOCROOT_DIR .env


HTTPD_DOCROOT_DIR=htdocs

Domain suffix

The default domain suffix (TLD_SUFFIX variable in .env file) is loc. That means that all your projects will be available under the following address: http://<project-directory>.loc. This can be changed as well, but is outside the scope of this getting started tutorial.

You can verifiy that the suffix is actually loc by checking your .env file:

host> grep ^TLD_SUFFIX .env

TLD_SUFFIX=loc

Making sense of it

Ok, let’s sum it up and make sense of the previously provided information. To better illustrate the behaviour we are going to use project-1 as our project directory name.

Item	Example	Description
data dir	`./data/www`	Where all of your projects reside.
project dir	`./data/www/project-1`	A single project. It’s name will be used to create the url.
docroot dir	`./data/www/project-1/htdocs`	Where the webserver looks for files within your project.
domain suffix	`loc`	Suffix to build up your project url.
project url	`http://project-1.loc`	Final resulting project url.

data dir

This directory is mounted into the httpd and php container, so that both know where all projects can be found. This is also the place where you create project directories for each of your projects.

project dir

Is your project and used to generate the virtual host together with the domain suffix.

docroot dir

A directory inside your project dir from where the webserver will actually serve your files.

domain suffix

Used as part of the project url.

Checklist

You know what the data directory is
You know what the project directory is
You know what the docroot directory is
You know what the domain suffix is
You know how domains are constructed