Missing Compose Services

Difficulty: Easy — 2 missing services

What This Challenge Is

A docker-compose.yml has been started for DALT.PHP. It defines the app service (your PHP-FPM container) but the stack is incomplete — the database and web server services are missing. Without them, you have a PHP process that can't accept HTTP requests and has nowhere to store data.

Run the challenge to load the incomplete file into your project:

php artisan challenge:start docker-compose-missing-services

Then open docker-compose.yml and add the two missing services.

The Two Services to Add

1. db — PostgreSQL database

The official image is postgres:16-alpine. It needs:

Environment variables — use env_file: .env. Your .env file should contain:

POSTGRES_DB=dalt
POSTGRES_USER=postgres
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret

(Add these to .env if they aren't there yet.)

Persistent storage — Postgres data must survive container restarts. Mount the named volume pgdata (already declared in volumes:) at /var/lib/postgresql/data inside the container:

volumes:
  - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

2. nginx — Web server

The official image is nginx:alpine. It needs:

The config file — mount the nginx/default.conf you completed in the previous challenge:

volumes:
  - ./nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

Port mapping — expose port 8080 on your host machine, forwarding to port 80 inside the container:

ports:
  - "8080:80"

Update app to depend on db

The app container needs the database to be running before it starts. Add:

depends_on:
  - db

File Involved

• docker-compose.yml — the only file to edit

Verify Your Solution

php artisan challenge:verify

The verifier checks:

• postgres:16-alpine image is declared
• nginx:alpine image is declared
• /var/lib/postgresql/data volume mount is present
• depends_on is set on the app service
• Port 8080 is mapped

Running the Full Stack

After verifying, try starting the full stack:

docker compose up

Then visit http://localhost:8080 — you should see the DALT.PHP welcome page.

To stop:

docker compose down

To stop and delete the database volume (fresh start):

docker compose down -v

Debugging Compose Issues

"Service 'db' failed to build" — db uses an image, not a build. Make sure you wrote image: postgres:16-alpine, not build: ..

"Bind mount failed" — The nginx/default.conf file must exist on your host. Complete the docker-broken-nginx challenge first if you haven't.

"Port 8080 already in use" — Something else is using 8080. Change the host port to 8081:80 temporarily.

"Connection refused" from PHP to Postgres — Check that DB_HOST=db in your .env. The hostname must match the service name in docker-compose.yml.

Next Challenge

db-first-queries — Fix broken SQL controllers that run against the users table.