bitnami/express
Bitnami container image for Express
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Express is a minimal and unopinionated Node.js web application framework.
Overview of Express Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
mkdir ~/myapp && cd ~/myapp
docker run --name express -v ${PWD}/my-project:/app bitnami/express:latest
Warning: This quick setup is only intended for development environments. You are encouraged to change the insecure default credentials and check out the available configuration options for the MongoDB® container for a more secure deployment.
Looking to use Express in production? Try VMware Tanzu Application Catalog, the commercial edition of the Bitnami catalog.
Starting December 10th 2024, only the latest stable branch of any container will receive updates in the free Bitnami catalog. To access up-to-date releases for all upstream-supported branches, consider upgrading to Bitnami Premium. Previous versions already released will not be deleted. They are still available to pull from DockerHub.
Please check the Bitnami Premium page in our partner Arrow Electronics for more information.
Dockerfile
linksLearn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page.
You can see the equivalence between the different tags by taking a look at the tags-info.yaml
file present in the branch folder, i.e bitnami/ASSET/BRANCH/DISTRO/tags-info.yaml
.
Subscribe to project updates by watching the bitnami/containers GitHub repo.
Express.js, or simply Express, is a web application framework for Node.js, released as free and open-source software under the MIT License.
The Bitnami Express Development Container has been carefully engineered to provide you and your team with a highly reproducible Express development environment. We hope you find the Bitnami Express Development Container useful in your quest for world domination. Happy hacking!
Learn more about Bitnami Development Containers.
The quickest way to get started with the Bitnami Express Development Container is using docker-compose.
Begin by creating a directory for your Express application:
mkdir ~/myapp
cd ~/myapp
Download the docker-compose.yml file in the application directory:
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitnami/containers/main/bitnami/express/docker-compose.yml
Finally launch the Express application development environment using:
docker-compose up
Among other things, the above command creates a container service, named myapp
, for Express development and bootstraps a new Express application in the application directory. You can use your favorite IDE for developing the application.
Note
If the application directory contained the source code of an existing Express application, the Bitnami Express Development Container would load the existing application instead of bootstrapping a new one.
After the Node application server has been launched in the myapp
service, visit http://localhost:3000
in your favorite web browser and you'll be greeted by the default Express welcome page.
In addition to the Express Development Container, the docker-compose.yml file also configures a MongoDB® service to serve as the NoSQL database backend of your Express application.
Name | Description | Default Value |
---|---|---|
EXPRESS_SKIP_DATABASE_WAIT | Skip waiting for database. | no |
EXPRESS_SKIP_DATABASE_MIGRATE | Skip database migration. | no |
EXPRESS_SKIP_SAMPLE_CODE | Skip copying sample code. | no |
EXPRESS_SKIP_NPM_INSTALL | Skip installation of NPM modules. | no |
EXPRESS_SKIP_BOWER_INSTALL | Skip installation of Bower modules. | no |
EXPRESS_DATABASE_TYPE | Database server type. | nil |
EXPRESS_DATABASE_HOST | Database server host. | nil |
EXPRESS_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER | Database server port number. | nil |
EXPRESS_DEFAULT_MARIADB_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER | Default MariaDB database port. | 3306 |
EXPRESS_DEFAULT_MONGODB_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER | Default MongoDB database port. | 27017 |
EXPRESS_DEFAULT_MYSQL_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER | Default MySQL database port. | 3306 |
EXPRESS_DEFAULT_POSTGRESQL_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER | Default PostgreSQL database port. | 5432 |
Commands can be launched inside the myapp
Express Development Container with docker-compose
using the exec command.
Note:
The
exec
command was added todocker-compose
in release 1.7.0. Please ensure that you're usingdocker-compose
version1.7.0
or higher.
The general structure of the exec
command is:
docker-compose exec <service> <command>
, where <service>
is the name of the container service as described in the docker-compose.yml
file and <command>
is the command you want to launch inside the service.
Following are a few examples of launching some commonly used Express development commands inside the myapp
service container.
Load the Node.js REPL:
docker-compose exec myapp node
List installed NPM modules:
docker-compose exec myapp npm ls
Install a NPM module:
docker-compose exec myapp npm install bootstrap --save
docker-compose restart myapp
Express by default does not require a database connection to work but we provide a running and configured MongoDB® service and an example file config/mongodb.js
with some insights for how to connect to it.
You can use Mongoose ODM in your application to model your application data.
The Express Development Container generates a Dockerfile in your working directory. This can be used to create a production-ready container image consisting of your application code and its dependencies.
Build your Docker image
docker build -t myregistry/myapp:1.0.0
Push to an image registry
docker push myregistry/myapp:1.0.0
Update orchestration files to reference the pushed image
docker-compose.yaml
Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes.
If you detect any issue in the docker-compose.yaml
file, feel free to report it or contribute with a fix by following our Contributing Guidelines.
We'd love for you to contribute to this container. You can request new features by creating an issue or submitting a pull request with your contribution.
If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue. Be sure to include the following information in your issue:
docker version
)docker info
Copyright © 2025 Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.