My checklist of PHP extensions used in Alpine docker image

I use a base-alpine-php image to build micro-service. For most of my use cases, I am going to install the following packages, if I really need them:

optional, only if I need to read/parse XML documents

• php8-xml
• php8-xmlwriter
• php8-simplexml

optional, only if I need serve the application via FastCGI

• php8-fpm
• php8-session

optional, only if I need the communication with my favorite PostgreSQL

• php8-pdo
• php8-pdo_pgsql
• php8-pgsql

optional, only if I need debug the complex PHP project

• php8-xdebug

optional, only if I need compress the documents.

• php8-zlib
• php8-phar

Package	Description	significance
git	git is required to install certain packages from source code	✅ must
make	make is required to build certain packages from source code	✅ must
nano	nano alternative lightweight editor in CLI	optional
htop	a handy command-line tool that displays running processes on a Linux system in real-time	optional
curl	curl is required to download certain packages	✅ must
openRC	OpenRC is the init system used in alpine. The init system manages the services, startup and shutdown of the system.	✅ must
nginx	Nginx (engine x) is an HTTP and reverse proxy server	optional
php8	PHP engine version 8	✅ must
php8-apcu	APCu is an in-memory key-value store for PHP. APC provides both opcode caching (opcache) and object caching.	✅ must
php8-ctype	this extension checks whether a character or string falls into a certain character class according to the current locale	✅ must
php8-curl	this extension supports PHP to download data using curl.	✅ must
php8-posix	This module contains an interface to those functions defined in the IEEE 1003.1 (POSIX.1) standards document which are not accessible through other means.	✅ must
php8-tokenizer	The tokenizer functions provide an interface to the PHP tokenizer embedded in the Zend Engine.	✅ must
php8-iconv	iconv converts a string from one character encoding to another	✅ must
php8-intl	It enables PHP programmers to perform UCA-conformant collation and date/time/number/currency formatting in their scripts.	✅ must
php8-json	PHP has these built-in functions to encode and decode JSON data	✅ must
php8-mbstring	Mbstring is an extension of php used to manage non-ASCII strings. It is non-default and need to be enabled manually.	✅ must
php8-opcache	Enables the opcode cache for the CLI version of PHP	✅ must
php8-openssl	This extension binds functions of OpenSSL library for symmetric and asymmetric encryption and decryption.	✅ must
php8-pcntl	Process Control support in PHP implements the Unix style of process creation, program execution, signal handling and process termination.	✅ must
php8-dom	The built-in DOM parser makes it possible to process XML documents in PHP.	optional
php8-xml	XML parser for PHP	optional
php8-xmlwriter	XML writer for PHP	optional
php8-fileinfo	FileInfo functions module can guess a content type and encoding of a file	optional
php8-fpm	FastCGI Process Manager is a primary PHP FastCGI implementation containing some features (mostly) useful for heavy-loaded sites.	optional
php8-pdo	PHP PDO is a database access layer that provides a uniform interface for working with multiple databases	optional
php8-phar	phar  is a very simple program for creating phar files with CLI	optional
php8-pdo_pgsql	PDO_PGSQL is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to PostgreSQL databases.	optional
php8-pgsql	a PostgreSQL module for PHP engine	optional
php8-xdebug	Xdebug module for PHP	optional
php8-zlib	This module enables you to transparently read and write gzip (.gz) compressed files	optional
php8-session	The session-support in PHP consists of a way to preserve certain data across subsequent accesses.	optional
php8-simplexml	a very robust SimpleXML parser	optional
php8-soap	The SOAP extension can be used to write SOAP Servers and Clients. It supports subsets of » SOAP 1.1, » SOAP 1.2 and » WSDL 1.1 specifications	optional

Comments

[Nacho Colomina Torregrosa]

Hey! Great list, thanks!!
As an addition, php8-soap if you need to connect to soap services

[Xun Zhou]

thx, add php8-soap to the list.

[DennisKahlerlon]

Thanks for the list, I use github.com/mlocati/docker-php-exte... for extensions

[Xun Zhou]

Nice project. I starred it. Thx for sharing. The purpose to create this check list for myself, is to remind me, start always with the minimal php image and install only the extension which is necessary for current product.

I am a minimalist :)

[Vinod Chauhan]

Hi Dennis, Can share how to use this lib. I'm using it in my dockerfile but it giving me error docker-php-ext-install: not found

This occurs in when I inherit FROM alpine:3.11

Thanks

[ReactJS Development Company]

Thanks for sharing these PHP extensions, very nice. These are very useful in PHP development projects.