notes/sandbox/docker_web_app/README.md

Basic Docker Usage with Node/Express backend

This small project was taken from an article over at nodejs.org.

Of Note:

Ensure that you have a .dockerignore file so that you don't copy your node_modules to the docker image:

node_modules
npm-debug.log

Build, run, test:

docker build . -t <your username>/node-web-app

docker run -p 49160:8080 -d <your username>/node-web-app

Note that this is exposing docker's port 8080 to the host machine's port 49160 in this case, so after running the image you can visit it on your host machine by going to localhost:49160, or for something this simple you can just use curl:

curl -i localhost:49160

If you want to go inside the container to check out the inside:

docker exec -it <container id> /bin/bash

Further Reading:

Building Efficient Dockerfiles - Node.js

Introducing npm ci for faster, more reliable builds