How To Containerize your Node.js Rest API and run it on Docker
A step by step guide with an example
I recently published an article regarding production ready nodejs rest API and this article is the extension for that. Below is the link if you want to have a look.
clone the below repo for this article.
git clone https://github.com/bbachi/prod-ready-node-rest-api.gitThere are two ways to run this API on a docker without a webpack and with webpack. when we use a webpack you don't have to install node_modules since it’s part of the bundle.
Without webpack
The following is the dockerfile which runs with the base image node:8.11-slim. we are copying package.json first and install all the dependencies before we copy other files. This is because we don’t want to install node_modules every time we change anything and build the image. Docker uses cache to take the layers as long as you don’t change commands.
Build the docker image from Dockerfile with this command and tag it with the name node-rest-API. you can list the images with command docker images.
docker build -t node-rest-api .
run the docker image in interactive mode with the following command and expose the port 3080 and name it nodeapi and test it in. the browser
docker run -it -p 3080:3070 --name=nodeapi node-rest-api
Interact with container
if you want to interact with your container, run the exec command where you can explore the container file system. you can edit files and execute npm commands as well.
docker exec -it nodeapi bash
With webpack
as I said earlier, we don’t have to copy node_modules and run npm install to install all the dependencies. all you need to copy the bundle file into the docker filesystem and run with node.
Run the following commands if you want to build the image and run the container.
docker build -f Dockerfile.webpack -t node-rest-api-webpack .docker run -it -p 3090:3070 --name=nodeapiwithwebpack node-rest-api-webpackThat’s it. Thank you for reading!!
