QuickStart: Deploy a PHP application to Elastic Beanstalk - AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Your AWS accountPrerequisitesStep 1: Create a PHP applicationStep 2: Run your application locallyStep 3: Initialize and deploy your PHP applicationStep 4: Browse your cloud applicationStep 5: Update and redeploy your applicationClean upNext steps

QuickStart: Deploy a PHP application to Elastic Beanstalk

In the following tutorial, you'll learn how to create and deploy a sample PHP application to an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment using the EB CLI.

Warning - Not for production use!

Examples are intended for demonstration only. Do not use example applications in production.

Your AWS account

If you're not already an AWS customer, you need to create an AWS account to use Elastic Beanstalk.

Sign up for an AWS account

If you do not have an AWS account, complete the following steps to create one.

To sign up for an AWS account

  1. Open https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.

  2. Follow the online instructions.

    Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a verification code on the phone keypad.

    When you sign up for an AWS account, an AWS account root user is created. The root user has access to all AWS services and resources in the account. As a security best practice, assign administrative access to a user, and use only the root user to perform tasks that require root user access.

AWS sends you a confirmation email after the sign-up process is complete. At any time, you can view your current account activity and manage your account by going to https://aws.amazon.com/ and choosing My Account.

Create a user with administrative access

After you sign up for an AWS account, secure your AWS account root user, enable AWS IAM Identity Center, and create an administrative user so that you don't use the root user for everyday tasks.

Secure your AWS account root user

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console as the account owner by choosing Root user and entering your AWS account email address. On the next page, enter your password.

    For help signing in by using root user, see Signing in as the root user in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

  2. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) for your root user.

    For instructions, see Enable a virtual MFA device for your AWS account root user (console) in the IAM User Guide.

Create a user with administrative access

  1. Enable IAM Identity Center.

    For instructions, see Enabling AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

  2. In IAM Identity Center, grant administrative access to a user.

    For a tutorial about using the IAM Identity Center directory as your identity source, see Configure user access with the default IAM Identity Center directory in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

Sign in as the user with administrative access

  • To sign in with your IAM Identity Center user, use the sign-in URL that was sent to your email address when you created the IAM Identity Center user.

    For help signing in using an IAM Identity Center user, see Signing in to the AWS access portal in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

Assign access to additional users

  1. In IAM Identity Center, create a permission set that follows the best practice of applying least-privilege permissions.

    For instructions, see Create a permission set in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

  2. Assign users to a group, and then assign single sign-on access to the group.

    For instructions, see Add groups in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a PHP application

For this quick start, you will create a Hello World PHP application.

Create a project directory.

~$ mkdir eb-php
~$ cd eb-php

Next, create an index.php file in the project directory and add the following code.

Example index.php
<?php
  echo "Hello from a PHP application running in Elastic Beanstalk!";
?>

Step 2: Run your application locally

Use the following command to run your application locally.

php -S localhost:5000

Open a browser to http://localhost:5000.

You should see your hello message in the browser and log messages in your terminal.

Stop the local server by entering Control+c, so you can deploy the Elastic Beanstalk.

Step 3: Initialize and deploy your PHP application

Next, you will deploy your application to an environment using the Elastic Beanstalk console or the EB CLI. For this tutorial, you'll use the EB CLI with the interactive option to initialize an environment.

To initialize your environment and create an environment

  1. Run the following init command.

    eb init -i

    The init command creates an application interactively. The application name will default to the local folder which is eb-php.

    For all prompts, except SSH access, accept the defaults to create an environment with the latest PHP platform version. For troubleshooting instances, you can set up SSH access by re-running the eb init -icommand at a later time, or connect using Amazon EC2 Instance Connect or Session Manager.

  2. Create an environment and deploy your application

    Run the following command to create an environment named blue-env.

    eb create blue-env

    When you run the eb create command for the first time, Elastic Beanstalk automatically builds a zip file of your application, called a source bundle. Next, Elastic Beanstalk creates an environment with one or more Amazon EC2 instances, and then deploys the application into the environment.

    Deploying your application to Elastic Beanstalk might take up to five minutes.

Step 4: Browse your cloud application

When the process to create your environment completes, your application should be running and listening for requests on port 5000. Connect to your application with the following command:

eb open

The eb open command opens a browser tab to a custom subdomain created for your application.

Step 5: Update and redeploy your application

After you have created an application and deployed to an environment, you can deploy a new version of the application or a different application at any time. Deploying a new application version is faster because it doesn't require provisioning or restarting Amazon EC2 instances.

Update your PHP code to include the REQUEST_TIME value from the server environment:

<?php
  echo "Hello from a PHP application running in Elastic Beanstalk!";
  
  $timestamp = $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'];
  echo '<br/>Request time: ' . date('Y/m/d H:i:s', $timestamp);
?>

Redeploy your PHP code to Elastic Beanstalk with the following command:

eb deploy

When you run eb deploy, the EB CLI bundles up the contents of your project directory and deploys it to your environment.

After the deploy finishes, refresh the page or reconnect to your application with eb open. You should see your updates. If not, troubleshoot by running your local server again to verify your changes.

Congratulations!

You've created, deployed, and updated a PHP application with Elastic Beanstalk!

Clean up

After you finish working with the demo code, you can terminate your environment. Elastic Beanstalk deletes all related AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, database instances, load balancers, security groups, and alarms.

Removing resources does not delete the Elastic Beanstalk application, so you can create new environments for your application at any time.

To terminate your Elastic Beanstalk environment from the console

  1. Open the Elastic Beanstalk console, and in the Regions list, select your AWS Region.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Environments, and then choose the name of your environment from the list.

  3. Choose Actions, and then choose Terminate environment.

  4. Use the on-screen dialog box to confirm environment termination.

Alternatively, you can terminate your environment with the EB CLI with the following command:

eb terminate

Next steps

You can explore your application environment using the Elastic Beanstalk console. For more info, see Explore your environment.

For advanced examples using PHP, see Advanced examples for PHP in Elastic Beanstalk.