markshust/docker-magento

Mark Shust's Docker Configuration for Magento

Table of contents

• Docker Hub
• Free Course
• Usage
• Prerequisites
• Setup
• Updates
• Custom CLI Commands
• Misc Info
• Credits
• License

Docker Hub

View Dockerfiles for the latest tags:

• markoshust/magento-nginx (Docker Hub)
  • 1.18, 1.18-8
• markoshust/magento-php (Docker Hub)
  • 8.1-fpm, 8.1-fpm-1
  • 8.2-fpm-develop
• markoshust/magento-opensearch (Docker Hub)
  • 1.2, 1.2-0
  • 2.4-develop
• markoshust/magento-elasticsearch (Docker Hub)
  • 7.17, 7.17-0
  • 8.4-develop
• markoshust/magento-rabbitmq (Docker Hub)
  • 3.9, 3.9-0
• markoshust/ssh (Docker Hub)
  • latest

Free Course

This course is sponsored by M.academy, the simplest way to learn Magento.

A free screencast course is available (which was fully refreshed in December 2021), which details the basic usage of this project:

Set Up a Magento 2 Development Environment with Docker

Course Curriculum

Intro

• Quick hi & welcome from Mark!
• About the course format

Initial Project Setup

• Install Docker Desktop & configure preferences
• Set up Magento with the automated onelinesetup script
• Set up Magento manually from a custom Git branch
• Set up Docker for an existing Magento project

The Basics of docker-magento

• Execute docker-magento helper scripts
• Start, stop, restart and check container status
• Execute bin/magento and composer within Docker containers
• Install Magento sample data

Docker Filesystem & Data Volumes

• Understand Docker volumes & host bind mounts
• Manage files & folders within Docker containers

PhpStorm

• Set up a docker-magento project in PhpStorm
• Set up the Magento PhpStorm plugin

Xdebug

• Install the Xdebug helper browser plugin for Chrome & PhpStorm
• Enable disable check the status of Xdebug
• Configure PhpStorm for Xdebug connections
• Trigger an Xdebug breakpoint in PhpStorm
• Trigger an Xdebug breakpoint for CLI commands in PhpStorm

Customize Server Configurations

• Understand the docker-compose application structure
• Increase the PHP memory limit in php.ini
• Increase the Nginx request timeout in nginx.conf
• Increase the MySQL buffer pool size with command or in my.cnf
• Install a new PHP extension by building a custom Docker image
• Configure multi-store instances in Docker with Nginx

Usage

This configuration is intended to be used as a Docker-based development environment for Magento 2.

Folders:

• images: Docker images for nginx and php
• compose: sample setups with Docker Compose

The Magento 1 version of this development environment has been deprecated and is no longer supported. PHP 5 was used as it's base, and that version has reached end-of-life. If you still wish to use this setup, please reference compose/magento-1 on tag 20.1.1, but please be aware these images are no longer maintained.

Prerequisites

This setup assumes you are running Docker on a computer with at least 6GB of RAM allocated to Docker, a dual-core, and an SSD hard drive. Download & Install Docker Desktop.

This configuration has been tested on Mac & Linux. Windows is supported through the use of Docker on WSL.

Setup

Automated Setup (New Project)

# Create your project directory then go into it:
mkdir -p ~/Sites/magento
cd $_

# Run this automated one-liner from the directory you want to install your project.
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/markshust/docker-magento/master/lib/onelinesetup | bash -s -- magento.test 2.4.6 community

The magento.test above defines the hostname to use, and the 2.4.6 defines the Magento version to install. Note that since we need a write to /etc/hosts for DNS resolution, you will be prompted for your system password during setup.

After the one-liner above completes running, you should be able to access your site at https://magento.test.

Install sample data

After the above installation is complete, run the following lines to install sample data:

bin/magento sampledata:deploy
bin/magento setup:upgrade

Manual Setup

Same result as the one-liner above. Just replace magento.test references with the hostname that you wish to use.

New Projects

# Create your project directory then go into it:
mkdir -p ~/Sites/magento
cd $_

# Download the Docker Compose template:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/markshust/docker-magento/master/lib/template | bash

# Download the version of Magento you want to use with:
bin/download 2.4.6 community
# You can specify the version and type (community, enterprise, mageos, mageos-nightly, mageos-mirror, mageos-hypernode-mirror, or mageos-maxcluster-mirror).
# The mageos type is an alias for mageos-mirror.
# If no arguments are passed, "2.4.6" and "community" are the default values used.

# or for Magento core development:
# bin/start --no-dev
# bin/setup-composer-auth
# bin/cli git clone [email protected]:magento/magento2.git .
# bin/cli git checkout 2.4-develop
# bin/composer install

# Want to install Magento <2.4.6? In bin/setup-install, replace the lines:
#  --elasticsearch-host="$ES_HOST" \
#  --elasticsearch-port="$ES_PORT" \
#  --opensearch-host="$OPENSEARCH_HOST" \
#  --opensearch-port="$OPENSEARCH_PORT" \
#  --search-engine=opensearch \
# with:
#  --elasticsearch-host="$OPENSEARCH_HOST" \
#  --elasticsearch-port="$OPENSEARCH_PORT" \
#  --search-engine=elasticsearch7 \

# Run the setup installer for Magento:
bin/setup magento.test

open https://magento.test

Existing Projects

# Take a backup of your existing database:
bin/mysqldump > ~/Sites/existing/magento.sql

# Create your project directory then go into it:
mkdir -p ~/Sites/magento
cd $_

# Download the Docker Compose template:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/markshust/docker-magento/master/lib/template | bash

# Replace with existing source code of your existing Magento instance:
cp -R ~/Sites/existing src
# or: git clone [email protected]:myrepo.git src

# Start some containers, copy files to them and then restart the containers:
bin/start --no-dev
bin/copytocontainer --all ## Initial copy will take a few minutes...

# If your vendor directory was empty, populate it with:
bin/composer install

# Import existing database:
bin/mysql < ../existing/magento.sql

# Update database connection details to use the above Docker MySQL credentials:
# Also note: creds for the MySQL server are defined at startup from env/db.env
# vi src/app/etc/env.php

# Import app-specific environment settings:
bin/magento app:config:import

# Create a DNS host entry and setup Magento base url
bin/setup-domain yoursite.test

bin/restart

open https://magento.test

Elasticsearch vs OpenSearch

OpenSearch is set as the default search engine when setting up this project. Follow the instructions below if you want to use Elasticsearch instead:

1. Comment out or remove the opensearch container in both the compose.yaml and compose.healthcheck.yaml files
2. Uncomment the elasticsearch container in both the compose.yaml and compose.healthcheck.yaml files
3. Update the bin/setup-install command to use the Elasticsearch ratther than OpenSearch. Change:

--opensearch-host="$OPENSEARCH_HOST" \
--opensearch-port="$OPENSEARCH_PORT" \

to:

--elasticsearch-host="$ES_HOST" \
--elasticsearch-port="$ES_PORT" \

Updates

To update your project to the latest version of docker-magento, run:

bin/update

We recommend keeping your docker config files in version control, so you can monitor the changes to files after updates. After reviewing the code updates and ensuring they updated as intended, run bin/restart to restart your containers to have the new configuration take effect.

It is recommended to keep your root docker config files in one repository, and your Magento code setup in another. This ensures the Magento base path lives at the top of one specific repository, which makes automated build pipelines and deployments easy to manage, and maintains compatibility with projects such as Magento Cloud.

Custom CLI Commands

• bin/analyse: Run phpstan analyse within the container to statically analyse code, passing in directory to analyse. Ex. bin/analyse app/code
• bin/bash: Drop into the bash prompt of your Docker container. The phpfpm container should be mainly used to access the filesystem within Docker.
• bin/cache-clean: Access the cache-clean CLI. Note the watcher is automatically started at startup in bin/start. Ex. bin/cache-clean config full_page
• bin/cli: Run any CLI command without going into the bash prompt. Ex. bin/cli ls
• bin/clinotty: Run any CLI command with no TTY. Ex. bin/clinotty chmod u+x bin/magento
• bin/cliq: The same as bin/cli, but pipes all output to /dev/null. Useful for a quiet CLI, or implementing long-running processes.
• bin/composer: Run the composer binary. Ex. bin/composer install
• bin/copyfromcontainer: Copy folders or files from container to host. Ex. bin/copyfromcontainer vendor
• bin/copytocontainer: Copy folders or files from host to container. Ex. bin/copytocontainer --all
• bin/cron: Start or stop the cron service. Ex. bin/cron start
• bin/dev-urn-catalog-generate: Generate URN's for PhpStorm and remap paths to local host. Restart PhpStorm after running this command.
• bin/devconsole: Alias for bin/n98-magerun2 dev:console
• bin/docker-compose: Support V1 (docker-compose) and V2 (docker compose) docker compose command, and use custom configuration files, such as compose.yml and compose.dev.yml
• bin/download: Download specific Magento version from Composer to the container, with optional arguments of the version (2.4.6 [default]) and type ("community" [default], "enterprise", or "mageos"). Ex. bin/download 2.4.6 enterprise
• bin/debug-cli: Enable Xdebug for bin/magento, with an optional argument of the IDE key. Defaults to PHPSTORM Ex. bin/debug-cli enable PHPSTORM
• bin/fixowns: This will fix filesystem ownerships within the container.
• bin/fixperms: This will fix filesystem permissions within the container.
• bin/grunt: Run the grunt binary. Ex. bin/grunt exec
• bin/install-php-extensions: Install PHP extension in the container. Ex. bin/install-php-extensions sourceguardian
• bin/magento: Run the Magento CLI. Ex: bin/magento cache:flush
• bin/mftf: Run the Magento MFTF. Ex: bin/mftf build:project
• bin/mysql: Run the MySQL CLI with database config from env/db.env. Ex. bin/mysql -e "EXPLAIN core_config_data" orbin/mysql < magento.sql
• bin/mysqldump: Backup the Magento database. Ex. bin/mysqldump > magento.sql
• bin/n98-magerun2: Access the n98-magerun2 CLI. Ex: bin/n98-magerun2 dev:console
• bin/node: Run the node binary. Ex. bin/node --version
• bin/npm: Run the npm binary. Ex. bin/npm install
• bin/phpcbf: Auto-fix PHP_CodeSniffer errors with Magento2 options. Ex. bin/phpcbf <path-to-extension>
• bin/phpcs: Run PHP_CodeSniffer with Magento2 options. Ex. bin/phpcs <path-to-extension>
• bin/phpcs-json-report: Run PHP_CodeSniffer with Magento2 options and save to report.json file. Ex. bin/phpcs-json-report <path-to-extension>
• bin/pwa-studio: (BETA) Start the PWA Studio server. Note that Chrome will throw SSL cert errors and not allow you to view the site, but Firefox will.
• bin/redis: Run a command from the redis container. Ex. bin/redis redis-cli monitor
• bin/remove: Remove all containers.
• bin/removeall: Remove all containers, networks, volumes, and images, calling bin/stopall before doing so.
• bin/removevolumes: Remove all volumes.
• bin/restart: Stop and then start all containers.
• bin/root: Run any CLI command as root without going into the bash prompt. Ex bin/root apt-get install nano
• bin/rootnotty: Run any CLI command as root with no TTY. Ex bin/rootnotty chown -R app:app /var/www/html
• bin/setup: Run the Magento setup process to install Magento from the source code, with optional domain name. Defaults to magento.test. Ex. bin/setup magento.test
• bin/setup-composer-auth: Setup authentication credentials for Composer.
• bin/setup-domain: Setup Magento domain name. Ex: bin/setup-domain magento.test
• bin/setup-grunt: Install and configure Grunt JavaScript task runner to compile .less files
• bin/setup-pwa-studio: (BETA) Install PWA Studio (requires NodeJS and Yarn to be installed on the host machine). Pass in your base site domain, otherwise the default master-7rqtwti-mfwmkrjfqvbjk.us-4.magentosite.cloud will be used. Ex: bin/setup-pwa-studio magento.test
• bin/setup-ssl: Generate an SSL certificate for one or more domains. Ex. bin/setup-ssl magento.test foo.test
• bin/setup-ssl-ca: Generate a certificate authority and copy it to the host.
• bin/start: Start all containers, good practice to use this instead of docker-compose up -d, as it may contain additional helpers.
• bin/status: Check the container status.
• bin/stop: Stop all project containers.
• bin/stopall: Stop all docker running containers
• bin/update: Update your project to the most recent version of docker-magento.
• bin/xdebug: Disable or enable Xdebug. Accepts params disable (default) or enable. Ex. bin/xdebug enable

Misc Info

Install fails because project directory is not empty

The most common issue with a failed docker-magento install is getting this error:

Project directory "/var/www/html/." is not empty error

This message occurs when something fails to execute correctly during an install, and a subsequent install is re-attempted. Unfortunately, when attempting a second (or third) install, it's possible the src directory is no longer empty. This prevents Composer from creating the new project because it needs to create new projects within an empty directory.

The workaround to this is that once you have fixed the issue that was initially preventing your install from completing, you will need to completely remove the assets from the previously attempted install before attempting a subsequent install.

You can do this by running:

bin/removeall
cd ..
rm -rf yourproject

Then, create your new project directory again so you can attempt the install process again. The bin/removeall command removes all previous Docker containers & volumes related to the specific project directory you are within. You can then attempt the install process again.

Caching

For an improved developer experience, caches are automatically refreshed when related files are updated, courtesy of cache-clean. This means you can keep all of the standard Magento caches enabled, and this script will only clear the specific caches needed, and only when necessary.

To disable this functionality, uncomment the last line in the bin/start file to disable the watcher.

Database

The hostname of each service is the name of the service within the compose.yaml file. So for example, MySQL's hostname is db (not localhost) when accessing it from within a Docker container. Elasticsearch's hostname is elasticsearch.

To connect to the MySQL CLI tool of the Docker instance, run:

bin/mysql

You can use the bin/mysql script to import a database, for example a file stored in your local host directory at magento.sql:

bin/mysql < magento.sql

You also can use bin/mysqldump to export the database. The file will appear in your local host directory at magento.sql:

bin/mysqldump > magento.sql

Getting an "Access denied, you need (at least one of) the SUPER privilege(s) for this operation." message when running one of the above lines? Try running it as root with:

bin/clinotty mysql -hdb -uroot -pmagento magento < src/backup.sql

You can also remove the DEFINER lines from the MySQL backup file with:

sed 's/\sDEFINER=`[^`]*`@`[^`]*`//g' -i src/backup.sql

Composer Authentication

First setup Magento Marketplace authentication (details in the DevDocs).

Copy src/auth.json.sample to src/auth.json. Then, update the username and password values with your Magento public and private keys, respectively. Finally, copy the file to the container by running bin/copytocontainer auth.json.

Email / Mailcatcher

View emails sent locally through Mailcatcher by visiting http://{yourdomain}:1080. During development, it's easiest to test emails using a third-party module such as Mageplaza's SMTP module. In order to use mailcatcher, set the mailserver host to mailcatcher and set port to 1025. Note that this port is different from the mailcatcher interface to read the emails.

Redis

Redis is now the default cache and session storage engine, and is automatically configured & enabled when running bin/setup on new installs.

Use the following lines to enable Redis on existing installs:

Enable for Cache:

bin/magento setup:config:set --cache-backend=redis --cache-backend-redis-server=redis --cache-backend-redis-db=0

Enable for Full Page Cache:

bin/magento setup:config:set --page-cache=redis --page-cache-redis-server=redis --page-cache-redis-db=1

Enable for Session:

bin/magento setup:config:set --session-save=redis --session-save-redis-host=redis --session-save-redis-log-level=4 --session-save-redis-db=2

You may also monitor Redis by running: bin/redis redis-cli monitor

For more information about Redis usage with Magento, see the DevDocs.

PhpMyAdmin

PhpMyAdmin is built into the compose.dev.yaml file. Simply open http://localhost:8080 in a web browser.

Xdebug & VS Code

Install and enable the PHP Debug extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Otherwise, this project now automatically sets up Xdebug support with VS Code. If you wish to set this up manually, please see the .vscode/launch.json file.

Xdebug & VS Code in a WSL2 environment

Install and enable the PHP Debug extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Otherwise, this project now automatically sets up Xdebug support with VS Code. If you wish to set this up manually, please see the .vscode/launch.json file.

1. In VS Code, make sure that it's running in a WSL window, rather than in the default window.
2. Install the PHP Debug extension on VS Code.
3. Create a new configuration file inside the project. Go to the Run and Debug section in VS Code, then click on create a launch.json file.
4. Attention to the following configs inside the file:
   • The port must be the same as the port on the xdebug.ini file.

     bin/cli cat /usr/local/etc/php/php.ini

     memory_limit = 4G
     max_execution_time = 1800
     zlib.output_compression = On
     cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0
     date.timezone = UTC
   
     xdebug.mode = debug
     xdebug.client_host = host.docker.internal
     xdebug.idekey = PHPSTORM
     xdebug.client_port=9003
     #You can uncomment the following line to force the debug with each request
     #xdebug.start_with_request=yes
   
     upload_max_filesize = 100M
     post_max_size = 100M
     max_input_vars = 10000

   • The pathMappings should have the same folder path as the project inside the Docker container.

     {
         "version": "0.2.0",
         "configurations": [
             {
                 "name": "Listen for XDebug",
                 "type": "php",
                 "request": "launch",
                 "port": 9003,
                 "pathMappings": {
                     "/var/www/html": "${workspaceFolder}"
                 },
                 "hostname": "localhost"
             }
         ]
     }

5. Run the following command in the Windows Powershell. It allows WSL through the firewall, otherwise breakpoints might not be hitten.

   New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "WSL" -Direction Inbound  -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (WSL)"  -Action Allow

Xdebug & PhpStorm

1. First, install the Chrome Xdebug helper. After installed, right click on the Chrome icon for it and go to Options. Under IDE Key, select PhpStorm from the list to set the IDE Key to "PHPSTORM", then click Save.

2. Next, enable Xdebug debugging in the PHP container by running: bin/xdebug enable.

3. Then, open PhpStorm > Preferences > PHP and configure:

   • CLI Interpreter

     • Create a new interpreter from the From Docker, Vagrant, VM... list.
     • Select the Docker Compose option.
     • For Server, select Docker. If you don't have Docker set up as a server, create one and name it Docker.
     • For Configuration files, add both the compose.yaml and compose.dev.yaml files from your project directory.
     • For Service, select phpfpm, then click OK.
     • Name this CLI Interpreter phpfpm, then click OK again.

   • Path mappings

     • There is no need to define a path mapping in this area.

4. Open PhpStorm > Preferences > PHP > Debug and ensure Debug Port is set to 9000,9003.

5. Open PhpStorm > Preferences > PHP > Servers and create a new server:

   • For the Name, set this to the value of your domain name (ex. magento.test).
   • For the Host, set this to the value of your domain name (ex. magento.test).
   • Keep port set to 80.
   • Check the "Use path mappings" box and map src to the absolute path of /var/www/html.

6. Go to Run > Edit Configurations and create a new PHP Remote Debug configuration.

   • Set the Name to the name of your domain (ex. magento.test).
   • Check the Filter debug connection by IDE key checkbox, select the Server you just setup.
   • For IDE key, enter PHPSTORM. This value should match the IDE Key value set by the Chrome Xdebug Helper.
   • Click OK to finish setting up the remote debugger in PHPStorm.

7. Open up pub/index.php and set a breakpoint near the end of the file.

   • Start the debugger with Run > Debug 'magento.test', then open up a web browser.
   • Ensure the Chrome Xdebug helper is enabled by clicking on it and selecting Debug. The icon should turn bright green.
   • Navigate to your Magento store URL, and Xdebug should now trigger the debugger within PhpStorm at the toggled breakpoint.

SSH

Since version 40.0.0, this project supports connecting to Docker with SSH/SFTP. This means that if you solely use either PhpStorm or VSCode, you no longer need to selectively mount host volumes in order to gain bi-directional sync capabilities from host to container. This will enable full speed in the native filesystem, as all files will be stored directly in the appdata container volume, rather than being synced from the host. This is especially useful if you'd like to sync larger directories such as generated, pub & vendor.

Copy compose.dev-ssh.yaml to compose.dev.yaml before installing Magento to take advantage of this setup. Then, create an SFTP connection at Preferences -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Deployment. Connect to localhost and use app for the username & password. You can set additional options for working with Magento in PhpStorm at Preferences -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Deployment -> Options.

Note that you must use your IDE's SSH/SFTP functionality, otherwise changes will not be synced. To re-sync your host environment at any time, run:

bin/copyfromcontainer --all

Linux

Running Docker on Linux should be pretty straight-forward. Note that you need to run some post install commands as well as installing Docker Compose before continuing. These steps are taken care of automatically with Docker Desktop, but not on Linux.

Copy compose.dev-linux.yaml to compose.dev.yaml before installing Magento to take advantage of this setup.

The host.docker.internal hostname

The host.docker.internal hostname is used on Docker for Mac/Windows to reference the Docker daemon. On Linux, this hostname does not exist.

This hostname is hard-coded in the php.ini file. To make this hostname resolve, add "host.docker.internal:172.17.0.1" to the app.extra_hosts parameter of compose.yaml, replacing 172.17.0.1 with the result of:

docker run --rm alpine ip route | awk 'NR==1 {print $3}'

You must also create a new entry in your /etc/hosts file using the same IP:

172.17.0.1 host.docker.internal

Extra settings

To enable Xdebug on Linux, you may also need to open port 9003 on the firewall by running:

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9003 -j ACCEPT

You may also have to increase a virtual memory map count on the host system which is required by Elasticsearch.

Add the following line to the /etc/sysctl.conf file on your host:

vm.max_map_count=262144

Blackfire.io

These docker images have built-in support for Blackfire.io. To use it, first register your server ID and token with the Blackfire agent:

bin/root blackfire-agent --register --server-id={YOUR_SERVER_ID} --server-token={YOUR_SERVER_TOKEN}

Next, open up the bin/start helper script and uncomment the line:

#bin/root /etc/init.d/blackfire-agent start

Finally, restart the containers with bin/restart. After doing so, everything is now configured and you can use a browser extension to profile your Magento store with Blackfire.

MFTF

To work with MFTF you will need to first enable the selenium image in the compose.dev.yaml file. Then, you will need to run the following.

1. Run mftf build process bin/mftf build:project. This should build the basic setup for mftf in your project.
2. Update the extra_host values to match your Magento URL and IP in compose.dev.yaml.
3. Update the values in src/dev/tests/acceptance/.env, including adding the new line SELENIUM_HOST=selenium to define the host Codeception should connect to.
4. Run a sample test bin/mftf run:test AdminLoginSuccessfulTest.
5. Update your nginx.conf file to allow access to the dev section with the following, before the final deny all section:

location ~* ^/dev/tests/acceptance/utils($|/) {
    root $MAGE_ROOT;
    location ~ ^/dev/tests/acceptance/utils/command.php {
        fastcgi_pass   fastcgi_backend;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include        fastcgi_params;
    }
}

For debugging, you can connect to the selenium image using a VCN client.

• Connect with the VCN option and 127.0.0.1:5900, (default password: secret)
• Run bin/mftf doctor to validate all sections are setup correctly.

Find more info here about mftf configuration.

Grunt + LiveReload for Frontend Development

Create a new theme and make it active

Create your new theme at app/design/frontend/VendorName/theme-name, with the related composer.json, registration.php and theme.xml files.

Make your new theme active at Admin > Content > Design > Configuration. Click the Edit button next to Global Scope, and set the Applied Theme to your new theme name, and click Save Configuration.

Load the LiveReload client file

To create a connection to LiveReload, you'll need to insert the LiveReload script into your theme. You can do this by creating a file in your theme at Magento_Theme/layout/default_head_blocks.xml with the contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
    <head>
        <script defer="true" src="/livereload.js?port=443" src_type="url"/>
    </head>
</page>

The "?port=443" parameter is important, otherwise the livereload.js script won't work.

While we're at it, let's also create an initial LESS file so we have something to test. Create a new file in your theme at web/css/source/_extend.less with the contents:

body {
    background: white;
}

You'll need to clear the Magento cache to enable your module, and make sure this layout XML update is properly loaded.

Your new theme should now be active at https://yourdomain.test. Since this is a new theme, it should appear the same as the parent theme defined in your theme.xml file, which is usually Blank.

Set up Grunt

Run bin/setup-grunt. This will set up the Grunt configuration files for your new theme. It's important to run this step after setting up your new theme, not before.

Start the Grunt watcher

Grunt can watch for filesystem changes by running bin/grunt watch. You can optionally pass in the --verbose or -v flag to toggle verbose mode on. This will let you know what's going on under the hood, so you can be sure it is compiling & watching the correct files, and updating them as changes are made.

LiveReload Browser extension

Running the grunt watch process also spawns the LiveReload server. Your browser needs to connect to this server, and this is done by installing the LiveReload browser extension.

In your browser, be sure to also open the Google Chrome Dev Tools, go to the Network tab, and click "Disable cache". This will ensure the browser does not long-cache static file assets, such as JavaScript & CSS files, which is important during development.

Ensure the LiveReload browser icon has been toggled on, and refresh the page. We can confirm the LiveReload script is loaded by going to the Network tab and ensuring the livereload.js file is loaded, and that it also spawns off a new websocket request to /livereload.

Test LiveReload

Since this is all set, let's update the CSS file to a different background color:

body {
    background: blue;
}

Upon saving this file, we will see the Grunt watcher detect the changes, and your browser should automatically load the new style without you needing to refresh the page, and without a full browser refresh.

Credits

M.academy

This course is sponsored by M.academy, the simplest way to learn Magento.

Mark Shust

My name is Mark Shust and I'm the creator of this repo. I'm a Zend Certified Engineer and Adobe Certified Magento Developer, and have been involved since the early days of Magento (0.8!). I'm no longer available for consulting, but am creating course content full-time at M.academy.

• 🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn
• 🎥 Watch my YouTube videos
• 🐦 Follow me on Twitter
• 📖 Read my blog
• 💌 Contact me

License

MIT