Connection refused on Docker Mysql with Laravel

Question

I'm having trouble connecting to the mysql database from my php/laravel container. I'm getting a connection refused all the time. The connection works just fine with Mysql Workbench though.

My docker-compose looks like this:

services:
  nginx:
    image: nginx:stable-alpine
    container_name: nginx
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    volumes:
      - ./src:/var/www
      - ./nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    depends_on:
      - php
      - mysql
    networks:
      - laravel

  mysql:
    image: mysql:5.7.22
    container_name: mysql
    restart: unless-stopped
    tty: true
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: project_db
      MYSQL_USER: dev
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: dev
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: dev
      SERVICE_TAGS: dev
    networks:
      - laravel
  php:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    container_name: php_node
    volumes:
      - ./src:/var/www
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
    networks:
      - laravel

And the relevant part of my.env looks like this:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=mysql
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=project_db
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=dev

I have tried removing everything and building the image again, but to no avail.

Can you guys spot my error?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

On Docker for windows you can use host.docker.internal to access the host IP.

I answered this in the comments but I thought I'd duplicate it as a proper answer to help anyone who finds this in the future and save them reading all the comments

Answer 2

For extracting docker container names and their IPs use below command in your terminal:

docker inspect -f '{{.Name}} - {{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' $(docker ps -aq)

It will show you something like:

/nginx - 172.18.0.4
/php - 172.18.0.3
/mysql - 172.18.0.2

Then use mysql container ip in your.env file

DB_HOST=172.18.0.2