GitHub Actions

php-ci is designed to run as the container for a GitHub Actions job. Because the PHP toolchain is already inside the image, you skip the shivammathur/setup-php step entirely — checkout, composer install, test.

Minimal workflow

Create .github/workflows/ci.yml:

name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: himanshuramavat/php-ci:8.3
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: composer install --no-interaction --no-progress --prefer-dist
      - run: ./vendor/bin/phpunit

Test matrix

Validate across every supported PHP line by templating the image tag from the matrix value:

name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        php: ['8.1', '8.2', '8.3', '8.4']
    container:
      image: himanshuramavat/php-ci:${{ matrix.php }}
    name: PHP ${{ matrix.php }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: composer update --no-interaction --no-progress --prefer-dist
      - run: ./vendor/bin/phpunit

Cache Composer dependencies

Speed up installs by caching Composer's global cache directory between runs:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: himanshuramavat/php-ci:8.3
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Cache Composer packages
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: /tmp/composer-cache
          key: composer-${{ hashFiles('**/composer.lock') }}
          restore-keys: composer-
      - run: composer install --no-interaction --no-progress --prefer-dist
        env:
          COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR: /tmp/composer-cache
      - run: ./vendor/bin/phpunit

With a database service

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: himanshuramavat/php-ci:8.3
    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres:16
        env:
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret
          POSTGRES_DB: app_test
        options: >-
          --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s
          --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5
    env:
      DB_HOST: postgres
      DB_DATABASE: app_test
      DB_USERNAME: postgres
      DB_PASSWORD: secret
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: composer install --no-interaction --no-progress
      - run: ./vendor/bin/phpunit

Service hostnames

When a job runs inside a container, service containers are reachable by their service name (postgres, mysql) rather than 127.0.0.1. Set your DB_HOST accordingly.

Using the GitHub Container Registry

The image is mirrored to GHCR, which avoids Docker Hub rate limits for GitHub runners. Reference it the same way:

    container:
      image: ghcr.io/himanshuramavat/php-ci:8.3

Full project example

A deploy-ready CI file combining lint, analyse and test:

name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  quality:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: himanshuramavat/php-ci:8.3
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: composer install --no-interaction --no-progress --prefer-dist
      - name: Coding standard
        run: ./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=PSR12 src
      - name: Static analysis
        run: ./vendor/bin/phpstan analyse src --level=6
      - name: Tests
        run: ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-text