Routes not updating inside my Laravel Container - laravel

Question

I've got this docker-compose:
version: '3'
services:
app:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: .docker/Dockerfile
image: laravel-docker
ports:
- 8080:80
volumes:
- ./:/var/www
links:
- mysql
- redis
environment:
DB_HOST: mysql
DB_DATABASE: laravel_docker
DB_USERNAME: app
DB_PASSWORD: password
REDIS_HOST: redis
SESSION_DRIVER: redis
CACHE_DRIVER: redis
mysql:
image: mysql:5.7
ports:
- 13306:3306
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: laravel_docker
MYSQL_USER: app
MYSQL_PASSWORD: password
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
redis:
image: redis:4.0-alpine
ports:
- 16379:6379
and this Dockerfile:
FROM php:7.1.8-apache
COPY . /srv/app
COPY .docker/vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
WORKDIR /srv/app
RUN docker-php-ext-install mbstring pdo pdo_mysql \
&& chown -R www-data:www-data /srv/app
RUN a2enmod rewrite
which is my configuration to run a Laravel container with MySQL and Redis. Everything works perfectly, but I'm encountering problems when I try to add (or update) a new route: it doesn't appear until I don't stop all containers and restart them with --build tag.
Is there a way to add and update routes without restart my containers?

Answer 1

ssh to the app container and from the project directory run this command:
php artisan route:clear

Answer 2

Based on the Dockerfile your app lives at /srv/app, yet in the yml file you list /var/www as the mount target. Change that to /srv/app
Explanation:
Building the Dockerfile results in an immutable image. The software inside the image was configured to serve your application from /srv/app. Since COPY . /srv/app added your app to the image at the right location, it could be served from there just fine, but that command adds it when the image is built, and then it becomes an immutable part of the image, so the changes you make on the host are not going to be visible inside. What you want to do is bind mounting your project directory to /srv/app, and that will obscure (temporarily "replace") the contents of that directory with the one on your host, and this is what that yml line does. (Btw the fact that mounts obscure the existing directory is not docker-specific.)
https://docs.docker.com/storage/bind-mounts/#mounting-into-a-non-empty-directory-on-the-container
The reason why we often both COPY and bind mount our project directories is that this practice allows us to use the same Dockerfile for both development (without frequent image rebuilds) and production.

Answer 3

I'd be curious to know if your change is properly propagating to your volume. It could be a permissions issue inside the container. What happens if you connect to the container and "cat" the contents of the routes file? Does it match the file outside the container? What OS are you running docker on? How locked down is the OS's file system? Are there any constraints that would make volumes work funky? Also, what file system sync process are you using? Are you just using the default?