armand1m/docker-express repository overview

⁠docker-express

This is a bare minimum Expressjs server app that is wrapped in a Docker image.

⁠Installation

Install Docker

Node JS is not required on your development machine, that is part of this image.

⁠Create the image

First create your site.

Here we will use index.js to server 'hello world' text message from our express server.

var http = require('http');

var server = http.createServer(function (request, response){
  response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
  response.end("Hello World from expressjs in a Docker container.");
});

server.listen(8000);

console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/");

⁠Create the Dockerfile

The contents of the Dockerfile build script will reference

# Use the base image created and maintained by mhart
# It has a bare minimum installation the server and the libraries needed for an expressjs server.
FROM mhart/alpine-node
COPY index.js .
EXPOSE 8000
CMD node index.js

Create and run a container from the image. This will build a container with the tag "express-helloworld" and the dot indicates the Dockerfile location.

docker build -t express-helloworld .

⁠View the image on your machine

docker images

⁠Run and test your image in a container

The -ti for "terminal interactive" allows you to use ^C to kill the process. The -p 8000:8000 options indicate the exposedPort:internalPort accessiblility. The express-helloworld option indicates the image name to create a container.

docker run -ti -p 8000:8000 express-helloworld

Switch to your browser and get: http://127.0.0.1:8000/⁠

⁠Clean up

Kill the running process

docker kill express-helloworld

List container instances to be removed

docker ps -a

Remove container instances docker rm

docker rm ea0ea

Remove images

docker rmi express-helloworld
docker rmi mhart/alpine-node

⁠Bonus

Add to your github repo

git init
git add .
## create your github repo
git remote add origin https://github.com/chrispauley/docker-express.git
git push origin master

⁠Deploy to a Docker Host

Login to your server host. At a terminal window

git clone https://github.com/chrispauley/docker-express.git
cd docker-express
docker build -t express-helloworld .
docker run -ti -p 8000:8000 express-helloworld

Make sure your server host port 8000 is accessible and test it: http://192.168.0.84:8000/⁠ Update a cname record on your domain and your up.

⁠Clean Up

Remember to clean up your containers and images!

⁠Deploy to Docker Hub

First tag your image with your hub.docker.com user account name:

docker tag a234b052333a chrispauley/express-helloworld
docker images

Next, login and push to Docker hub

docker push chrispauley/express-helloworld

Now you can deploy using a docker pull command on a docker host server. Switch to the docker host machine.

docker run -ti -p 8000:8000 chrispauley/express-helloworld

Test it from your browser and enjoy.