I know right? I've just run ssh localhost and I've got a full PHP application running in my terminal?! What! Me too. When I first saw Joe Tannenbaum's Tweet where he showed off his awesome ssh cli.lab.joe.codes I thought to myself, I had to get this working myself. I have a secret project that I'm currently working on but during my research, I managed to adapt his guide for getting charmbracelet/wish running with PHP to work with Docker!
This is project is mainly for building TUIs however it can run any PHP script so you can build cool forms, resumes or anything you desire!
Well, messing around with SSH is not something I want to do to my servers. Additionally, if I'm going to have the public SSH into my server I want to make sure it's ring-fenced. With a Docker container, it's even more ring-fenced then just SSHing directly into the server.
Want to see how it looks yourself? I've deployed this repository to a Hetzner Cloud server which is just running Docker.
ssh yeehaw.dev
- PHP 8.3 (Installed locally)
- Docker
This project is in early access, and I'm quite new to Docker so please consider contributing if you think this could be improved! Please share your thoughts in the issues/discussions. Thank you!
To get started, run the following Composer create-project command. Make sure to rename the ssh-app-name to the name of your project.
composer create-project sammyjo20/ssh-php ssh-app-name
After the command has been run, enter the directory it just created.
You will have the following directory structure. Here is an explanation of all the important files.
.
├── .github # Contains workflows for running tests, PHP Stan and Code Style Fixers.
├── src # Your application's source files
├── tests # Automated tests (PEST)
├── docker-compose.yml # This file will be used to deploy your application to production.
└── Dockerfile # This file allows you to customise the production image and add extra PHP extensions.
You may choose to keep the tests and the .github folder. If you don't use/need code style or PHP stan these can be uninstalled by removing them from composer.json and running composer update.
Now you have a great baseline for building your SSH TUI, go build something awesome.
In the src directory, you will find an index.php file. This file is the entry point for your SSH app. You can choose to do anything you like with this. This template has pre-installed laravel/prompts and joetannenbaum/chewie to demonstrate how it can be used.
You may also consider installing nunomaduro/termwind which is a fantastic tool that lets you write HTML in the terminal.
Here are some useful resources for getting started:
- Joe Tannenbaum - Hacking Laravel Prompts For Fun & Profit
- Joe Tannenbaum - Building TUIs Gotchas & Good Info
- Laravel Prompts Documentation
- joetannenbaum/chewie Documentation
During development, it's recommended to run the script with the following command:
php ./src/index.php
Obviously, you're going to want to see the SSH server right before your eyes! You can do this by running the following command.
composer run-dev
This will run the SSH server in your terminal window. In another window, you should be able to run the following command
ssh localhost -p 2201
You may need to add additional extensions to get your server to work in production. You can do
this by modifying the Dockerfile in the root directory. The base image runs Alpine Linux and
has a few common PHP extensions, however you can add more here if you need.
RUN apk add php-redis
Your server must have Docker installed.
Firstly, copy the docker-compose.yml file to docker-compose.prod.yml and open it up. Inside here, change the ports from 2201:22 to 22:22. This will mean on production your app will run on the regular SSH port.
You may also need to define the platform to build on.
Next, we're going to need to change the OpenSSH port on your server to something other than 22, because that's what our application will be running on. On your server run:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Look for the line that starts with Port. It may be commented out, go ahead and uncomment it. Change it to whatever number you'd like (and is available), for example 2201. Then restart the service with the following command
sudo service ssh restart
Now you want to update your firewall rules to ensure that the port is not blocked. Depending on which firewall you are using, this may be different for you. For ufw:
sudo ufw allow 2201/tcp
Caution
Important: Before you log out of the server or close that terminal tab, open a new terminal and make sure you can access your server via SSH. If it doesn't work you will be locked out of your server, so remaining logged in in the original tab will allow you to remedy any issues.
Next time you need to SSH into your server you can specify the custom port.
ssh user@your-server -p 2201
If you're using Laravel Forge on this server, make sure you change the port that Forge connects to the server with under Settings > Server Settings > SSH Port.
Make sure you commit your docker-compose.prod.yml file and then deploy the whole project to your server.
Now you can run the following command on your server. Run the following ./deploy.sh script.
If it is the first time running the above deploy script, you may need to make it executable.
chmod u+x ./deploy.sh
./deploy.sh
If you are using Laravel Forge, you can add this to your deployment script to automatically update the SSH app.
It's completely normal for this command to exit after running. If you want to check that the Docker container is running, you can run the following command
docker ps
Now you can SSH into your server ssh your-server-ip and you should see your awesome PHP application! You can even point your DNS to the server IP and use that too if you like.
ssh your-server-ip
This project uses the sammyjo20/ssh-php Dockerfile. You can see this Dockerfile and contribute by following the link below.
https://github.com/sammyjo20/ssh-php-docker
If you found this project useful, please consider sponsoring me either one time or a regular sponsor. This helps pay me for my time maintaining and keeping projects like these active. You can sponsor me on GitHub by clicking here.
- Huge thanks to Joe Tannenbaum's for his awesome blog post and his support via Twitter/X DMs!
If you find any security related issues, please send an email to [email protected]