Struggling with Laravel Microservices: Service-to-Service Communication and Local Development Setup
I'm a bit lost with I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. Currently developing a microservices architecture using Laravel 9. Each service communicates over HTTP, but I'm running into issues with service discovery and local testing. To simulate a real-world scenario, I've set up multiple Laravel applications in Docker containers. The core challenge is how to manage service endpoints dynamically during local development. I've tried using a combination of Laravel's built-in HTTP client to handle calls between services, but the hardcoded service URLs in my `.env` files become cumbersome as the project scales. For example, in Service A, I have: ```php $response = Http::get(env('SERVICE_B_URL') . '/api/resource'); ``` However, when I switch to a local environment, I need to manually change this URL each time, which is prone to errors. I've explored using Docker Compose to define each service and leverage the container names, but I can't seem to get it to resolve correctly. Using Laravel's `route()` helper hasn't worked out because these are separate services. I've also considered implementing a service discovery mechanism, perhaps using something like Consul or Eureka, but that feels like overkill for local development. Another approach was to set up a reverse proxy using NGINX to route requests correctly based on service paths, but Iām unsure how to configure it properly within Docker. If anyone has had experience setting up a local development environment for a Laravel microservices architecture, particularly around service discovery and communication best practices, Iād greatly appreciate any insights or examples that might point me in the right direction. Any help would be greatly appreciated! This is part of a larger web app I'm building. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm working with Php in a Docker container on Windows 11. How would you solve this?