page_title: Dockerizing a Node.js Web App page_description: Installing and running a Node.js app with Docker page_keywords: docker, example, package installation, node, centos
Note:
- If you don't like sudo then see Giving non-root access
The goal of this example is to show you how you can build your own Docker images from a parent image using a Dockerfile
. We will do that by making a simple Node.js hello world web application running on CentOS. You can get the full source code at https://github.com/enokd/docker-node-hello/.
First, create a directory src
where all the files would live. Then create a package.json
file that describes your app and its dependencies:
{ "name": "docker-centos-hello", "private": true, "version": "0.0.1", "description": "Node.js Hello World app on CentOS using docker", "author": "Daniel Gasienica <daniel@gasienica.ch>", "dependencies": { "express": "3.2.4" } }
Then, create an index.js
file that defines a web app using the Express.js framework:
var express = require('express'); // Constants var PORT = 8080; // App var app = express(); app.get('/', function (req, res) { res.send('Hello World\n'); }); app.listen(PORT); console.log('Running on http://localhost:' + PORT);
In the next steps, we‘ll look at how you can run this app inside a CentOS container using Docker. First, you’ll need to build a Docker image of your app.
Create an empty file called Dockerfile
:
touch Dockerfile
Open the Dockerfile
in your favorite text editor and add the following line that defines the version of Docker the image requires to build (this example uses Docker 0.3.4):
# DOCKER-VERSION 0.3.4
Next, define the parent image you want to use to build your own image on top of. Here, we'll use CentOS (tag: 6.4
) available on the Docker index:
FROM centos:6.4
Since we‘re building a Node.js app, you’ll have to install Node.js as well as npm on your CentOS image. Node.js is required to run your app and npm to install your app‘s dependencies defined in package.json
. To install the right package for CentOS, we’ll use the instructions from the [Node.js wiki]( https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js- via-package-manager#rhelcentosscientific-linux-6):
# Enable EPEL for Node.js RUN rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # Install Node.js and npm RUN yum install -y npm
To bundle your app's source code inside the Docker image, use the ADD
instruction:
# Bundle app source ADD . /src
Install your app dependencies using the npm
binary:
# Install app dependencies RUN cd /src; npm install
Your app binds to port 8080
so you'll use the EXPOSE
instruction to have it mapped by the docker
daemon:
EXPOSE 8080
Last but not least, define the command to run your app using CMD
which defines your runtime, i.e. node
, and the path to our app, i.e. src/index.js
(see the step where we added the source to the container):
CMD ["node", "/src/index.js"]
Your Dockerfile
should now look like this:
# DOCKER-VERSION 0.3.4 FROM centos:6.4 # Enable EPEL for Node.js RUN rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # Install Node.js and npm RUN yum install -y npm # Bundle app source ADD . /src # Install app dependencies RUN cd /src; npm install EXPOSE 8080 CMD ["node", "/src/index.js"]
Go to the directory that has your Dockerfile
and run the following command to build a Docker image. The -t
flag let‘s you tag your image so it’s easier to find later using the docker images
command:
$ sudo docker build -t <your username>/centos-node-hello .
Your image will now be listed by Docker:
$ sudo docker images # Example REPOSITORY TAG ID CREATED centos 6.4 539c0211cd76 8 weeks ago gasi/centos-node-hello latest d64d3505b0d2 2 hours ago
Running your image with -d
runs the container in detached mode, leaving the container running in the background. The -p
flag redirects a public port to a private port in the container. Run the image you previously built:
$ sudo docker run -p 49160:8080 -d <your username>/centos-node-hello
Print the output of your app:
# Get container ID $ sudo docker ps # Print app output $ sudo docker logs <container id> # Example Running on http://localhost:8080
To test your app, get the the port of your app that Docker mapped:
$ sudo docker ps # Example ID IMAGE COMMAND ... PORTS ecce33b30ebf gasi/centos-node-hello:latest node /src/index.js 49160->8080
In the example above, Docker mapped the 8080
port of the container to 49160
.
Now you can call your app using curl
(install if needed via: sudo apt-get install curl
):
$ curl -i localhost:49160 HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Powered-By: Express Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 12 Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 03:53:22 GMT Connection: keep-alive Hello World
We hope this tutorial helped you get up and running with Node.js and CentOS on Docker. You can get the full source code at https://github.com/gasi/docker-node-hello.