How to Run a Docker Container on Your Local Machine

i have been working on a hobby project, nutrition tracking app, to practice the latest continuous integration tools. this post is about dockerizing an angular2 app and on your local machine. i skipped the basic definitions about docker, containers, and ci for the sake of simplicity.

docker commands

frequently used docker commands:

build docker image

docker build -t image-name .

run docker image

docker run -p 80:80 -it image-name

stop all docker containers

docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)

remove all docker containers

docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

remove all docker images

docker rmi $(docker images -q)

port bindings of a specific container

docker inspect [container-id]

dockerfile

a dockerfile is a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image. here's a simple dockerfile that copies the "dist" folder to /usr/share/nginx/html:

from nginx
copy dist /usr/share/nginx/html
expose 80

project structure

the dockerfile should be located in the root of the project. here is an example from my project:

how to run the docker container on your local machine

build

docker build -t angular-webpack .

run

docker run -p 9000:80 -t angular-webpack

this will create a container with the image "angular-webpack" and bind the container’s port 80 to the host machine’s port 9000. after the "docker run -p 9000:80 -it angular-webpack" command, the docker container runs on a linux virtual machine. so we can't run docker natively on windows or a mac. the following properties must be set:

set environment properties

set userprofile = c:\users\xxx  --> set your user proile 

set docker_cert_path=%userprofile%\.docker\machine\machines\default

set docker_host=tcp://192.168.99.100 --> find this ip in docker quick start terminal

set docker_machine_name=default

set docker_tls_verify=1

test: http://192.168.99.100:9000/index.html

for troubleshooting: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41208782/docker-localhost-process-not-working-on-windows .