Database Setup & Docker

Hey HighDefinitionSteve,

Yeah, env vars discovering should work well if you installed Docker the official way and use symfony console to run any console commands, but I haven't had experience with Rancher. Thanks for this tip!

Cheers!

Hey Nathan,

Thanks for sharing this edge case with others. Actually, I think I always work with projects that are already with initiated Git repo, so I haven't faced the problem you explained here. Though, for me it's weird that Docker compose does not work properly if you don't have .git/ folder, IMO Docker should not care about Git repo, it should care about the folder in which you're currently cd-ed to. But I may be wrong, or maybe it depends on some special system settings. Anyway, maybe it will be useful for someone.

Cheers!

Yeah, I only didn't have it initialized because I had just downloaded the code here.
It's actually the Symfony CLI that uses the .git folder. It uses that to find the name of the directory that the project is in, and then looks for a Docker container running with the same name. No .git folder, Symfony CLI didn't detect the project name, and without the project name it didn't know which Docker container to connect to.

Someone opened a PR to the CLI to improve the directory detection just last week, actually 🙂

Hey Nathan,

Oh, I see it now! Yeah, I has probably never faced it because always have Git initialized, but when you download the course code - it makes sense there's no Git there, though it's a good idea to init it first.

Good catch actually! And thanks for sharing this with others, I didn't know about this behavior. It sounds like it should be fixed upstream to be more robust.

Cheers!

Hey Jethro,

No worries, you haven't missed a thing! Docker isn't a prerequisite here, and we don't expect you to know it. We just use it as a quick shortcut to get a database running with one command (docker compose up -d). That compose.yaml file showed up automatically when you installed Doctrine, so there's nothing for you to set up.

If you'd rather not bother with Docker, that's totally fine too. If you've already got MySQL running locally, just pop your own DATABASE_URL into a .env.local file and point it at your database. Everything in the course will work the same.

Hope that clears things up. Cheers!

Hi MolloKhan, thanks so much for the explanation - all makes perfect sense now, absolutely fantastic!

Hey @Octavio-B

Did you download the course code from this page? What web server are you using?
Do you see any errors in the console?

Cheers!

Hey MolloKhan

I'm building my own app while following these tutorials, so most of the packages installed are the most recent; so, in this case the profiler might be a different version from the one of the course. Though, I don't think that's the issue here.

I'm using the Symfony Local Web Server. I would also like to point out that I have another app where this tab is shown and I checked the configuration of the profiler in both apps, and it seems to be the same.

The console doesn't show any errors, until I try to create the database:

octavio@octavio-HP-EliteDesk-800-G5-SFF:~/aca_finanzas$ symfony console doctrine:database:create
Could not create database "app" for connection named default
An exception occurred while executing a query: SQLSTATE[42P04]: Duplicate database: 7 ERROR:  database "app" already exists

I'm not sure what's causing the server tab to disappear, but if you open up the request page, do you see the "configuration" tab on the sidebar?

Yes, the "configuration" tab is enabled.

if you open up the phpinfo page do you see the $_SERVER and $_ENV variables? Something in your config is preventing the server tab from showing up

Yes, both variables are visible with distinct values. Actually, everything else works fine. Now I'm thinking it has to do with a new version of the "debug" package.

Are you on the latest version? Try upgrading if you're not. Also, check the app logs, perhaps there's a hint of what's going on

I'm on the latest version of everything except php, which is the version 8.3.23. I'm looking at the app logs but I don't know what to look for. I don't see any log about the profiler, though.

Even if I create a new project, the server tab won't appear.

Hey @Octavio-B,

This is a known issue in the SymfonyCLI. If you upgrade to the latest version (5.12.0+), it should be fixed.

--Kevin

Hey @Martin-C

Is your database server up and running?

Cheers!

okay, I've got it solved ... had to turn off docker compose running my other projects and work just with the startshop one. I haven't realized the other one is running and I had a lot of containers mixed up there. Now it's all fine.

Hey @Martin-C,

Glad you got it sorted. The Symfony CLI is usually smart enough to account for multiple containers but might have been some port duplication issues.

--Kevin

CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
b1b2619ddf1b postgres:16-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" 3 days ago Up 3 days (healthy) 0.0.0.0:32772->5432/tcp, [::]:32772->5432/tcp starshop-database-1

Hi, yes it is...

sudo systemctl status postgresql
[sudo] password for martin:
postgresql.service - PostgreSQL RDBMS
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Thu 2025-05-29 14:04:24 CEST; 3 weeks 3 days ago
Main PID: 1769 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) CPU: 1ms

may 29 14:04:24 martin-inspiron153530 systemd[1]: Starting postgresql.service - PostgreSQL RDBMS...
may 29 14:04:24 martin-inspiron153530 systemd[1]: Finished postgresql.service - PostgreSQL RDBMS.

Hey @Martin-C,

That's weird. Are you on mobile, or perhaps the toolbar is not expanded?
Do you see any errors in the console?

Cheers!

okay, got it working ... I just had to restart symfony server

hi, this is the server status

martin@martin-inspiron153530:~/Projects/starshop(master)$ symfony server:status
Local Web Server

Listening on http://127.0.0.1:8001
The Web server is using PHP FPM 8.4.8 (from default version in $PATH)

Local Domains

Workers

PID 75896: symfony console tailwind:build --watch
PID 75887: /usr/bin/php8.3 -S 127.0.0.1:44845 -d variables_order=EGPCS /home/martin/.symfony5/php/8bebc3742d26aca368056064cc39b71a5694968f/8.3.21-router.php

Environment Variables

Exposed from Docker

Hey @John-B, what version of the Symfony CLI are you using? (symfony version)

Symfony CLI 5.10.5

I see this issue looks similar. Does the workaround posted there help at all?

It's working now, thanks.
It was a permission issue ...
I had run docker compose with a "user" permission while symfony was served with "root" permissions.
I might have to restart the project with "user" permissions rather than "root" permissions to get around permission problems.
Initially I had forgot to modify the /var/www permissions to allow write for local users and just got around the issue using sudo ... silly me..

Awesome, I'm so happy this is resolved for you!